A Garment of Brightness
by miaokuancha
Summary: Moving to Forks, spending the last eighteen months of her childhood with a father she barely knew ... it seemed like a good idea at the time. A Twilight mosaic, freely drawn from book and movie, wanders into AU as the story unfolds. Rated M for some intense, disturbing images. PM me if you have questions.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** _The Twilight story, and all publicly recognised characters in it, are the creation of **Stephenie Meyer**, and further elaborated and elucidated by all who have brought them to life on the silver screen. I'm just playing in this lovely forest. Homage, not copyright infringement, is the purpose._

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**Gratitude: **_To my friend, **geo3** of Star Wars fandom and Anakin Saga fame, keeper of Fortune's Gate. This story would never have seen the light of day if not for you. To **averysubtlegift** generous, patient, beta extraordinaire. Your Price of Balance enchanted me beyond words. And then you took me under your angel wing. To all the wonderful writers in the Twilight fandom, especially those who have so beautifully explored the depths and nuances of Edward's past, and his soul that he doesn't think he has. I have spent lifetimes in your stories: haunting, piercing, unforgettable. Thank you. Lastly, a blood red rose to thee, **quothme**, mistress of the wild fire._

* * *

_O our Mother the Earth, O our Father the Sky,_

_Your children are we, and with tired backs_

_We bring you the gifts that you love._

_Then weave for us a garment of brightness;_

_May the warp be the white light of morning,_

_May the weft be the red light of evening,_

_May the fringes be the falling rain,_

_May the border be the standing rainbow._

_Thus weave for us a garment of brightness_

_That we may walk fittingly where birds sing,_

_That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,_

_O our Mother the Earth, O our Father the Sky!_

"_Song of the Sky Loom" ~ Tewa prayer._

* * *

_**Prologue ~**_

The sand and little rocks are all dry and hard and crunchy under my sandals. I can hear every step that I take. Mom and Phil are in the kitchen, back in the house, puttering around with the coffee. She thinks I'm still in the house, too. In my room or something. It's okay. I'm a big girl now. And I haven't really gone that far. The desert starts right at the edge of our yard, after all.

It's almost nine o'clock in the morning, and the sun, my one true love, has already climbed a good way up over the edge of the world. But it's also the beginning of January, and the whole half of the planet where I'm standing is tilted away. I'd wanted to be doing this in summer, when the sun would be hot and strong on my skin, not distant and pale like now. I wanted my last memory of the sun to be warm and close. But I couldn't really say that to anyone, and no one was listening to what I _was_ saying. They were too busy trying to talk me out of it, trying to tell me that there was no need for me to go.

But showing is always stronger than telling. I could see how Mom went all mopey each time Phil went on the road. And I definitely saw the phone bills those two racked up. Now, she's free to go with him. I figure my plane ticket will pay for itself in a month, tops.

The little bit of wood is in my hand. It's knotted and funny-shaped. I don't know whether it was a branch or a root, once upon a time. All the bark, or whatever covering it had, is long ago stripped away. Only the inner wood remains. As smooth and soft and pale as my own skin. It's something I found just laying on the ground on one of my walks. Picked it up. Kept it. Later I started looking for things. Bits of fiber that I stripped from a dried and dead yucca plant. A hard, round little seed of a plant that I don't know, just know that it's a seed. Is it cruel of me to keep it, rather than planting it? But we're not staying here, and who knows what will happen to the little bit of garden Mom and I made, once we're both gone.

So these were things that I'd picked up. Here and there, now and then, a few hundred yards from suburbia, in the desert on the outskirts of Phoenix. Here where it's silent and clean and still. Where the life is hidden – under the sand, in the shadows of rocks, or clinging to tumbleweeds. Where, if the wind is right, you can smell creosote and maybe sage, mixed with the gritty taste of stone. Where the sun bakes you, challenges you to keep enough water in your body to stay alive. Where it's harsh and it's beautiful and it's absolute. And where I'm leaving. Again.

I had braided the yucca fibers into a thin, tough string. Bored a hole through the seed with, of all things, a large sewing needle. That took a long time. I'd threaded the string through the hole, tied the seed onto the scrap of wood.

But it's not quite complete. I still need something. So I'm out in the desert, walking around aimlessly, and the houses are getting smaller behind me. In front of me are mountains. All around me is flat. With lots of rabbit bush and the stray saguaro. And January's weak sun.

I see a tumble of rock. Clumps of little button cactus are squatting in the crevices, where water will condense at night. Their spines have caught one, single little down-feather – from … a roadrunner? Maybe. It's white and fluffy and tiny and perfect. I tie the bit of down onto the souvenir that I've made, winding it on with the yucca thread, next to the seed.

I can hear Mom calling me now. She's frantic because I'm not in the house where she thought I was. Even though she knows that I'm already packed. Even though my flight's not leaving until one. Even though, in all the almost three years that we've lived here, I've never gone out of sight of the house. She worries about mountain lions, I guess.

I'm going to leave my little scrap thing on Mom's dresser. I'm pretty sure she'll see it before she and Phil leave for Jacksonville next week. I wonder if she'll take it with her. Wonder if she'll see it and understand that this is goodbye. That I'm not coming back. That it's Dad's turn, now.


	2. The Story of My Life

**The Story of My Life**

Mom drives me to the airport with the windows open. The a/c is broken, and she's been waiting until her next paycheck to fix it. Technically, Phil is supposed to help with things like that, since they're married now, but he's only twenty-something and a baseball player, of all things – minor leagues, just starting out. All that makes him kind of like a big brother to me, kind of like a little brother to my Mom, and pretty much broke except for his advance from the team. That's already been spent on his ticket to training camp down in Jacksonville. As for Mom's next paycheck, it's also her last – at least from her job here in Phoenix – so I guess it will be going for gas and stuff as she follows Phil to Florida in the car. With the windows open.

Outside the windows, the bright, dun-colored land is racing backward. On the radio, Chuck Wicks is stealing Cinderella, and in my hair, the barely warm wind is making tangles that I will need two doses of crème rinse to comb out. I have goose bumps on my arms because I'm wearing my favorite shirt – the sleeveless one in white eyelet lace that I got when I was twelve. My Grandma gave it to me, and she's gone now, so, I guess I'm glad that it still fits me. The boys at school can call me stick-girl all they want. My Grandma's little fingernail is worth more than all of them put together.

North by northwest – from Phoenix that's about exactly where it is – is a town called Forks. It's a tiny little town tucked away on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state. I guess it's not that far from Phoenix. It's still in the United States, and the flight from Phoenix to Seattle is only three hours and eleven minutes. But it really might as well be on another planet. It's that different. It hardly ever rains in Phoenix, Arizona. It hardly ever doesn't rain in Forks. I know this for a fact. I lived in Forks the first four years of my life. And I went there two weeks out of every summer, from third grade to end of middle school. If you've guessed that's where my Dad lives, you get the prize.

Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport is all pale concrete and glass and blinding at mid-day. Even in January. Inside, the air conditioning is on too high, and I'm freezing at the check-in counter. Everything is not the way I wanted it to be, but I've stubbornly left my big, poufy new parka inside my carry-on. At least let me get off the ground before I pull it out.

"Why are you doing this, Bella?" Mom asks, right to the last. "You hate Forks. Don't you remember how you used to cry and carry on each time I drove you up?"

_That's because you always left me there, Mom._

"Come to Jacksonville with us. You'll like it there. It's warm. And sunny."

Like Mom's hair. Except now her hair is cold, because of the air conditioning.

"Got beaches, too," Phil chimes in.

But I have my ticket in my hand. And my bags are checked. There isn't anything left to do but hugs and kisses all around, and then wave through the glass.

* * *

From above, the airport looks like one of those Art Deco papyrus fans, except that the stem – the highway leading in to it – has kind of an S-curve. It gets small real fast as the plane climbs up. I look hungrily at the desert, pretending it's summer, until that, too, passes away behind me.

When wisps of cloud start blocking the ground below, I pull out my parka.


	3. First Sights

**First Sights**

Forks is just like I remember it – a dripping, misty, dark, little one-horse town. Without horses, of course. This is the twenty-first century, and no tourists come here to make it worth anyone's while to keep a real stable.

Lots of trees, though. Mostly pines and firs and spruces. So it's dark. If the sun shone on it, I guess you'd see the green inside the black. Green pine branches above. Green ferns down below. The spaces between the trees are wide, like the aisles of a cathedral. The branches closing above are the roof. And there's rocks and streams and thickets in between. And moss – making dewy green fur on everything. When a tree dies, it lies down in the aisle and makes a window above. The moss is already there on the trunk; the ferns come right after, then little trees, growing up. That's why all the trees are in rows, growing up from the bodies of the dead. If the sun shone down, all those greens, and the rusty pine needle carpets, might blaze like stained glass between the black frames of trunks and limbs. But the sun is a stranger in Forks. And without the sun streaming in through the big rose window, what is a cathedral but a tomb?

A highway runs through it.

They have a few traffic lights, the usual pit stops and cafes, a town hall – a library, thank God – and the schools of course. I doubt anything was built here after the Great Depression. Well, maybe in the Fifties, who knows? To someone my age, it's all pretty much the same. Before my time. Before my parents' time.

Getting there takes a few hops. Hop off the plane in Seattle, hop on a little prop plane – a really little and jiggly prop plane – to Port Angeles. That takes an hour. Then hop off that plane and into my Dad's cruiser. Yes, cruiser. As in black and white, with a bar of flashing red lights on top. My Dad is the Chief of Police in Forks. With the cruiser his to use 24/7, he never did feel a need to get any other car. And I guess he wouldn't think it makes his daughter look like a convict to be driven around in it.

The drive takes an hour and some. We have to stop for a deer that has been smashed by what I guess must have been one of the big logging trucks. My civic-minded Dad has to haul it to the side. He puts his police light on, so no one will go speeding past and run him down while he's wrestling the carcass. There is blood. But he keeps most of it on the tarp that he uses as a kind of apron-slash-body-bag.

We don't say much. We never do. Just the usual awkward hug at the terminal gate when he picked me up. You know the kind – one armed, with our faces both turned away. I've wondered whether that was one of the reasons Mom left Dad. Was he always giving her one-armed hugs after they got married? But I'm the same way, and she never left _me_ on any church doorstep.

It's quiet and dark and drizzling, when we pull in. The drip, drip, drip from the trees and the eaves is everywhere. The porch still smells a little moldy. Not enough to give anyone allergies – just wet, wet wood, that hasn't seen paint quite often enough.

"I got a surprise for you, Bells." Dad _never_ calls me Isabella. It just wouldn't sound right coming from him. He's not an Isabella kind of guy.

I can see the shadow of a hulk in the driveway, so I have a pretty good idea what the surprise is. But I _am_ surprised, since I'd made sure to take driver's ed early and had pooled my life's savings with a little extra from Mom for just this thing – or something, anyway – so I keep quiet.

"You remember Billy Black, down at La Push?" La Push is the little postage stamp of an Indian reservation down on the coast. The wild, wet, black-cragged coast. The place with a hundred little streams rushing down to the sea. Streams with deep, rocky pools at their bends and pauses. Pools where slim, silver trout hide in the coolest water.

"You remember he'd go fishing with us those summers, don't you, Bella?" I do, but I don't want to. Even when I was tiny, I always hurt for the fish. The steel hook through the lip, the thrashing against the unbreakable line, the staring eye, the suffocation in thin air and having its back broken on that one, convenient anvil of rock. They were still alive when we gutted them; I knew they were, because the eye was still bright. And still, my mouth just stubbornly watered when the fillets hit the hot oil.

Dad's still talking. He knows I don't answer much, anyway, so it's all the same.

"Old Billy's in a wheelchair, now." Was it the diabetes, I wonder. Did he have to get that foot amputated after all? "So he can't drive. Offered to sell me his truck real cheap."

The hulk. "Does it run?"

"Sure does." Dad has my all of two bags out of the trunk and slung on one shoulder and is ushering me into the house. "I'll show you in the morning."


	4. Tell it to the Rain

**Tell it to the Rain**

The house is dark, just like the rest of Forks.

Macaroni and cheese in microwave trays is the welcome home dinner.

The staircase is still narrow. The fourth step still creaks. There's still only one bathroom in the whole house.

Dad gives me dibs. He always does.

And here I am, under the energy-saver fluorescent bulb, staring into the mirror with a mouth full of toothbrush and toothpaste suds, and my mind is yelling at my Dad. _Why do you stay here? This house is so _depressing_! Why the f – do you stay?_ Maybe it's my Mom's voice that I'm hearing. I can't tell. It all blends together. Mom hates it when I use the f–word. Washes my mouth out with soap if I do.

We didn't move far, at first, you know. Well, I guess it's not all that close. I keep forgetting what a big state Washington is. But we really just went off the peninsula and over the mountain. To the other side of the Cascades. The rain shadow side. A little town named White Swan. Just upriver from another little town called Sunnyside. I'm not making this up. You can look for yourself on Google Maps.

I remember my Mom saying, "That old bear is comin' over the mountain. You'll see. Town's got his name on it for Chrissakes." If she ran the words together like that, it wasn't swearing. And then she'd giggle and hug me. My Dad's name is Charlie Swan. He never came. And I got teased big time in first and second grade for having the same name as the town. And Bella. "Bella-COOLA," they used to call me. The boys making a sound like chimpanzees hooting. That was third grade. I'm _not_ Bella Coola. Or any other tribe. My hair and eyes may be dark, but I am paleface all the way. Even in Phoenix, I never got tan, just a little rosy in the cheeks. But I don't want to talk bad about White Swan. Jenny Mahoney lives there. Or I think she does. Maybe she's moved, too, by now. We were bffs. I've got the friendship bracelet to prove it.

End of third grade, my Mom up and says, "Screw that man!" We moved to Salt Lake. I cried all the way there.

The house is like a drum. You can hear every raindrop that hits its roof. And I can feel my Dad outside the bathroom door, now. Wondering if he should knock and ask me if I'm done.

"I'm almost done, Dad," I call, in my good girl voice. I wipe my face, and the little bit that dripped on my Tinkerbell pyjama shirt, and pack it up. All my girl stuff is going back to my room with me. I'm going to live here for eighteen months and never leave my stuff in the bathroom. What was I thinking?

Dad ruffles my hair as I go by. He never does that, not since I started to get what on my body passes for breasts. I don't look up. What the hell am I doing here if I'm not even going to look him in the eye? But I can't. Not yet, anyway.

"I put an extra quilt on the foot of your bed, there, Bells. Just in case."

"Thanks, Dad."

And here's my room. Just the way I left it three years ago. No, four. My middle school career ended almost before it began. We moved to this place outside Santa Cruz where they had what they called "Junior High" for grades 7, 8 and 9. Never finished that, either. By the time I got to Phoenix, it was back to regular old high school in 9th grade.

So all the stuff on the walls is kid stuff. Pictures of horses from the dude ranch in Cali where I'd wished I'd been that summer, instead of Forks. There's a little crocheted something or other that I never finished, laying on the nightstand. I hope he at least dusted in here.

I've put all my bathroom stuff back in the pouch in the side of my luggage. My white eyelet shirt is all folded neatly, and I find I'm still holding it against my chest. Its white is almost hidden in the looseness of my pyjama shirt, and under the covers where I am right now, curled up, my knees up tight. I do need that extra quilt. None of them are very thick anyway.

I turn off the light, and it's pretty much pitch black. The nearest house down the road is hidden by trees. The nightlight I had when I was a little kid doesn't work. The bulb's probably out. I'm too proud to ask my Dad for a new one tonight.

And the rain is still drumming, softer now, just enough to make you sad. Just enough to call up every random, retro little scrap of poetry or song I've got swirling around in the hidey-hole inside my head.

_Il pleure dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville … _

_Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, telling me just what a fool I've been ... _

_And while the future's there for anyone to change, still, you know, it seems_

_It would be easier sometimes to change the past … _

And I've got the quilt all stuffed into my mouth, 'cause that's the way to do it if you don't want anyone to hear. And I wonder if all the tears and the wet that are getting on it will somehow miraculously dry by the time I crawl back in here tomorrow night.

And I know I'm going to look like death warmed over for my first day at school in the morning.

* * *

_Il pleure dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville ... __It weeps in my heart like it rains on the town_

_~ Opening lines of a poem by Paul Verlaine, in Romances sans paroles (Songs Without Words) published in 1874. Something Bella might have read in French class ..._


	5. Edward

**Edward**

The truck is a monster.

And I love it. Who would have guessed?

It's big and it's red and it's faded like an old pair of jeans. I have no idea what year it is, and my Dad's not saying. Probably afraid of scaring me off the thing, but no way. I love this old clunker.

It makes a huge roar when he turns the key in the ignition for me in the dark at 7 am; with the drizzle coming in at my collar, and the whole street socked in with sheets of cold white mist, and no hope of ever seeing any sky, even when it does finally get light. In Phoenix it would be light enough to see _everything_ at this hour. But not in Forks. Too far north. Too much rain.

"Gotta go, kiddo. I'm gonna be late. Radio works, too, check it out."

"Thanks, Dad." I mean it. I want to get in right away, and not just because I'm getting wet outside. The thing fits me, somehow. Big blocky fenders, square old cab, dead dull paint job and all. I don't even mind the smells. Tobacco, gasoline … and peppermint, of all things. The inside is clean (somebody must have put in a good afternoon's work for _that_, I bet), it's _dry_, and it's warmer than I was expecting.

"Oh, and Bells," – my Dad has the window of his cruiser down, and he's leaning out to make sure I can hear – "don't try to push her past 55. Fourth gear doesn't work that good."

I should have known. Chief Swan's daughter is _not_ going to get picked up for speeding. And she has a ton of iron between her and any other vehicle, God forbid. I wonder if Uncle Billy was also in on this plot to get me a guardian behemoth? And I don't even care. I'm already looking at the truck as my refuge against the first day in a school full of strangers.

I sort of know where the High School is. I mean, it's not like I was blindfolded on my visits here those other summers. And where else would it be but "just off the highway"? But I still almost miss it amongst the big, dark pines that hide its one playing field. It just doesn't feel like a school to me. Instead of a big, sprawling building with a massive parking lot, it's a bunch of smaller, brick, almost house-like buildings, with little parking lots scattered among them. Which if you ask me is really poor planning in a town where it rains every day. I bet their absentee rate is sky high.

Everything about the first day at a new school is torture, and I'm not expecting anything but.

Where to park? Try to follow the other cars.

Luckily, my big red monster doesn't stick out too badly. Most of the cars are pretty vintage, or else rough and ready: trucks, vans, a jeep with monster wheels. The only exception is a totally sweet little silver Volvo C30, parked away from all the others. No surprise there. Can you imagine the lawsuit if someone ever scratched _that_ car? I don't want to imagine it being my door that makes contact, so I park in the opposite corner of the lot.

Which means I have a long trek to the middle building, which has a small but helpful plaque on it saying, "All visitors check in at front office." So far, so good. I don't have to ask for directions. My big poufy parka is the right color, kind of a gun-metal gray that blends in with all the other parkas and raincoats I see, although there are a few of those red and black hunter checks that must be mandatory for backwoods towns. And the hood is keeping the rain off me and hiding my face at the same time. All good.

The front office is very bright and cheerful. Feels more like Middle School than a High School. The lady at the desk is big and motherly with frizzy brown hair. She's wearing a purple T-shirt, which I guess must be a school booster shirt, because it has the words "Go Lightning!" scrawled across it in furiously orange, zig-zaggy letters.

"I'm Isabella Swan." I try not to make it sound like a question; honestly, I do. The woman's eyes light up anyway. I'm expected. What did I expect? Daughter of police chief's flighty ex-wife returns to Forks for junior year. Whisper, whisper, whisper.

"Here you are, dear." Class list, schedule, school map, sign-in slips – she goes over everything with me, even highlighting the best route from class to class. She really is very considerate, and I try to pay attention, I really do. But it's all just too much, and I've done it too many times before, and my eyes are glazing over from sleep deprivation, and I just wish I were already sitting in my seat in the first class so I wouldn't have to run the gauntlet of getting there.

I walk out feeling like I have a brand across my forehead: "New Kid." Or maybe "Prodigal" is more like it, but I have a feeling that's too big of a vocabulary word for this place. And besides, as far as the kids in school are concerned, I've never existed until today.

"So, hey!"

I freeze. Just like the deer must have, blinded by the headlights, right before the logging truck smashed into it.

"I'm Jessica." A hand is shoved toward me. Very pale, so at least I'm not the only albino here. A quick glance around at the other kids in the hallway shows that all of them look like they haven't seen the sun in a while. No, duh.

I manage my best smile, "I'm Bella," and shake her hand. Maybe this won't be so bad after all. In Phoenix I must have been the absolute only one in three thousand kids at school who wasn't tan and buff and either blonde or Mexican. Jessica is almost blonde, but she's not tan, and under her hoodie and sweats I really can't tell if she's buff or not.

"Chief Swan's your Dad, right?"

"Yeah."

"I knew that 'cause my cousin is his dispatcher."

"Cool." I know how to say it with a shrug, just making conversation. And not letting on that I detect more conspiracy by meddling adults. A crowd is gathering. Must be her posse. This is where the fun begins. Faces swimming before my eyes, names sliding out of my head as soon as they're said, like slippery little minnows too small for the net. I'll get them all straight eventually, and be bobbing my head and smiling stupidly in the mean time.

"So, welcome to Forks," a tall, black-haired anorexic-looking girl is saying.

"Yeah, where the sun don't shine!" A tow-head with very carefully gelled spikes, and a roundish face.

"Jesus, Mikey, you've been saying that since we were in eighth grade."

I must have just made his day, being new and all, and never having heard his little joke before.

Turns out I'm in the same English class as they are, first period, so they sort of usher me around. It's okay. Could be a lot worse. The day slides by in a blur. Third period already, and running to the science building because the drizzle has decided to become a downpour. I have a feeling that "Mikey" would like to have me run under his poncho, but I have cover of my own, and anyway … I'm not ready to reveal to everyone quite just yet how clumsy I am. I tend to step on people's feet in close quarters. Or worse yet, trip and splat my face in the mud.

The heat in Forks High School doesn't work too well, so a lot of the rooms have at least one or two heat reflector fans strategically placed to help out. In Biology, they have one each at the front and rear of the class. Handing my attendance slip to Mr. Molina gives me an excuse to stand right in front of the one by his desk, even if only for a moment. It feels so good to be warm.

I scan the room while he gets my stuff together to give me.

Generic, black-topped lab tables, the high stools for seats, eye-wash sink and fan hood in the back. It feels familiar. I just wish that I could have been put in Physics instead of Biology, which I've already taken before. But there are no openings. Just like this school has no AP French, so I have to take first year Spanish with all the freshmen. There are no empty seats in this class either, except for one. Jessica and her crew are already shuffling over to their various seats around the room. The only open space is next to … I turn my eyes quickly back to the teacher, and the big heavy textbook and two workbooks he's handing me.

The boy.

I can barely breathe, he's so beautiful. Pale, pale skin, like porcelain. His hair isn't long, but it's rebellious. A kind of rich, soft brown with bronzy accents. He has a slender, graceful build that layers of clothing can't quite disguise. His eyebrows are very straight, and his dark, dark eyes are … we only make eye contact for a moment. He snaps his gaze away from me, too, even faster than I can. But in that moment I see – Terror? Hatred? Fury?

_Why?_

I'm fumbling with the books, and the strangeness of his gaze almost but not quite distracts me from the glimpse I've had of his lips. They're soft, and red enough to contrast sharply with his face, and oh God, I would give my life right here and now to kiss him on the mouth, just once. Just once. Me who has never kissed, never even _wanted_ to kiss _anyone_. Ever.

And the universe is forcing me to sit next to him. It's so wrong.

Eyes on feet. Don't trip. Do not trip and do not pass out. Breathe. I pick my way down the aisle to the Siege Perilous that awaits me. From the edges of my non-vision, I see that he has left his seat and is speaking in an inaudibly low voice with another boy two rows in front.

"Mr. Cullen, what are you doing?" The teacher's voice calls everyone to attention. I'm almost there, but reflexively stop, too.

"I'm trading seats with Josh." Even his voice is beautiful.

"That won't be necessary."

"Yes it is!" Maybe it came out louder and more forcefully than he'd intended, but his body language has nothing in it of backing down.

"And why is that?" I can see that the teacher is one inch short of losing patience. So is the boy, because he just blurts out –

"She stinks!"

Amidst general laughter – at me, at him, what does it matter? – Mr. Molina says, "Go back to your seat, Edward. Now."

I do not drop my books. I do not trip over the backpack that sits halfway into the aisle just in front of the last desk. I do not cry. I do not look at the boy as he slides, with no good grace at all, back onto his stool. I don't look anywhere but at my stuff as I put my things down, get myself settled and pull my notebook out. The titters are dying down. I'm biting on the inside of my lower lip to keep a grip. Too hard, it turns out. I can taste the blood running into my mouth. _Damn, damn and double damn!_ No one can see that my lip is bleeding because it's on the inside. But it might swell. God Almighty, the last thing I need now is a fat lip.

How could he say that? How could he be so cruel? Even if I do smell, what did I ever do to him that he should humiliate me like that? In front of everyone. On my very first day. The worst part of all is that I can't check myself to see if I _do_ smell. Everyone would see, and then I'll _really_ never live it down. I took a shower last night. How bad can it be?

And there he is, still making a spectacle. His stool is as far away to the side as he can move it without being off the desk completely. And he's sitting as far to the edge of his stool away from me as he can without falling off. I can still hear the occasional giggle, as one or another classmate glances at us. And all the while I'm sucking very discreetly on the inside of my lip because it's still bleeding. Not much, but enough that I can taste it going down. It's starting to throb.

My eyes are straight front. Blackboard, notebook. Notebook, blackboard. But there's such a thing as peripheral vision. And "Edward" isn't quite out of the edge of that. He isn't looking at me, either, but God, if looks could kill, I'd be a goner. He's ostensibly taking notes, like me, holding his pencil so tightly that I think the tendons in his hand might snap. And his left hand, too, is clenched in a fist on his thigh, knuckles white, white, white. If he has any fingernails at all, they're going to leave marks. _I hope you draw blood,_ I think viciously. At least then we'd be even.

His face has a strange pinched look, and every once in a while his nostrils flare. News flash: shouldn't do that if you don't want to smell someone. He might be trembling, but his whole body is wound so tight, arching from where he's sitting on the stool to where his wrist is braced on the desk for writing, that it's impossible to tell. I wonder if he's even breathing.

After an eternity, the class is over, and he's out the door and gone before I've even gotten my books into my backpack.

Girls' bathroom. Must get to girls' bathroom. Undetected, that would be the hard part; since I have to pull out the office lady's helpful map to get my bearings. But I finally find it and duck into the handicapped stall. More room for me to crouch on the floor. I find that I'm shivering. Whether from cold or emotion I don't know. I put my face into my parka hood, but no tears will come. I don't want to make any noise, so I really need to let everything out through tears, but – nothing. It's like I'm frozen. It's horrible. I finally give up and pull out my little mirror (you know, for zits and food stuck in teeth) to check my lip. The bleeding has stopped, but it's tender, and it does seem to be getting a little swollen. If it doesn't get any worse, maybe no one will notice. I hope.

"Bella, you in there?"

Oh, dang. Jessica. I guess I should be grateful. At least I remember her name.

"Just finishing." Quick sniff at my shirt. Nothing offensive. Deep inhale. Still nothing. Only a little of the "Purple Sage" body wash I'd brought from Phoenix. And it's not clashing with my hair because I use the same shampoo. Maybe some stray body heat might have warmed it up a bit, but there's no sweat smell. Or maybe it was the slight damp from having run in the rain? _But that's not my fault._ And I can't be the only one. _What is his problem?_

I flush the toilet to keep my cover, wipe my face on the lining of my parka, and come out. No dice. Jessica has me nailed.

"He's just a stuck up bastard and nobody likes him anyway, so don't even listen to him."

I just shrug. "Whatever."

But Jessica's okay. I pop a handful of tic-tacs just in case, and follow her out.


	6. More

**More**

"You should've seen Edward Scissorhands in Biology, today!" Mike – he's already managed to tell me his name is _Mike_, not "Mikey" – is talking loudly enough that practically the whole lunch line can hear him. Jessica is glaring at him. "You shoulda seen it. He looked like he was eating fried worms the whole time." I think Mike is going to slap his knee, but he doesn't.

"Mikey, do you even have _half_ a brain?" Jessica kind of slaps him on the arm when she says it.

"What?" And he has the most innocent, hurt, puppy-dog look I've ever seen.

"You're hopeless." And she rolls her eyes in a big circle. "Don't pay any attention to him, Bella, the boys in this school are all clueless."

Actually, I thought it was pretty funny. "Edward Scissorhands." Except that I have this sudden image of my heart being held by those scissors, and then the blades cutting and flying faster than the eye can see, then opening up my heart and holding it like one of those paper cut-outs of people hand in hand like a daisy chain.

Lunch is chicken nuggets – "chicken maggots," Mike calls them, which earns him another slap from Jessica – canned corn, canned carrots, milk, salad and fruit if you want any, and some kind of cake with frosting. I can see I'd better be sure I eat well at home. I just grab an apple and call it a day. Three more classes to go, then I can escape in my red monster. Until tomorrow. Please, please, _please_ God, don't let Edward Scissorhands be in any of my other classes.

I shuffle over with Jessica and her crew to their table. It's nice not to have to sit alone at lunch, but it still doesn't keep the kids at the other tables from staring. New kid. Smells funny. Makes handsomest boy in school eat fried worms.

A movement catches me from the corner of my eye. It's all I can do to keep my jaw from dropping onto my tray.

_There's more than one?_

The anorexic girl, Angela is her name, leans over to me and whispers, "It's criminal, isn't it."

There are five, to be precise. Edward, two other boys, and two girls. And every single one of them is drop-dead gorgeous. They walk into the cafeteria together and amble past us to a table in the corner. Like they belong on a runway. In slow-mo. Edward doesn't look at me. Not even a glance. There's a way of not looking at someone that is worse than giving them the biggest, meanest, stink-eye ever, and this is it. I can almost feel the waves of _I hate you_ rolling off of him. And onto me.

Back in the girl's bathroom, I'd promised myself that I was _not_ going to care. But still I can feel a lump growing in my throat. Why is he ignoring me in such a dirty look kind of way? Here, away from class? I'm not anywhere near him. I'm not trying to get close to him. It hurts my feelings. Really hurts. My heart rises up in rebellion. _I don't deserve to be hated. And I never did anything to you!_

One of the other kids at our table is snickering softly. "The Cullen coven."

Why do they have to be the topic of conversation at our table, now? It's like I can't escape. And still I can't help sneaking a look at them.

I don't see how they can all be Cullens. They would be too close in age – Edward looks like the youngest, and he's a junior, like me, so how much of a spread does that leave for the rest of them? Or had some of them been held back? They don't really look related, either. Well, perhaps the two blonds, who stand like boy and girl versions of the same tall and willowy template. But the two dark-haired ones couldn't be more different from each other. The boy is tall and big, muscled and cut – like a wrestler. His sister barely comes up to his shoulder – an impossibly lovely manga girl, with hacked-off hair, bottomless eyes and a heart-shaped face. And of course none of them looks like Edward. The only thing they all have in common is marble-pale skin, dark eyes – even the blond ones – and absolutely startling grace as they move. It's really hard not to stare, actually.

Luckily, they breeze by, not even glancing at anyone or any thing, almost as if they are in a bubble, or a different dimension. Even Edward, with his storm cloud eyes.

Mike nudges the boy beside him, a spindly-looking kid with a flaming zit under his chin. "Stop my breathing and slit my throat – I must be _e_mo!"

Everyone at the table giggles in a muted sort of way. But these Cullens don't really fit the type. No piercings – at least no visible ones. As for hair, well, maybe the black-haired girl does come close. Or Edward, maybe. And if they all are wearing somber clothing, well, so does half the school.

"Sometimes they have the mascara on so thick you can see it smudging down their cheeks. On the _guys_!" Mascara? Is that what makes the skin around their eyes look so dark … shadowed? I had taken it for bad sleep habits. Like mine.

"They're posers. The real Goths won't have anything to do with them." Apparently, no one else at school will, either. Angela must have seen me looking confused, because she's leaning toward me again, explaining.

"They kind of keep to themselves."

"Yeah," the boy with the acne puts in, "they even _date_ themselves." Everyone sort of giggles at that, too, and he looks like he thinks he's been very clever.

Jessica leans in to the gossip circle that has quietly created itself at the table, and fills me in.

"The big guy with the dark hair, that's Emmett. He and the blonde girl, Rosalie, are like, a _thing_." I see that they are, in fact, holding hands under their table. Now they casually let go, almost as if they know they're being talked about. Maybe they do, although no one at their table is looking over at us.

"And the blond guy, Jasper – looks like he's in pain all the time – he's Rosalie's twin … he and the little dark-haired girl, Alice, are, like, totally _doing _it." As they had walked by, I had seen how Alice had kept one hand lightly under the blond boy's elbow, then, half-way to the far corner table, he'd taken her hand and she'd done a graceful little ballerina turn under his arm. I'd thought it was sweet; had even, for a moment, forgotten Edward's hatingly averted eyes, and felt my heart moving toward the light-footed girl, wanting to be friends. Now I am being told, and seeing with my own eyes, that all of them are brothers and sisters – _with benefits. _I don't know what to think.

Silence stretches at the table, and I slowly realize that somewhere in this I am being had.

Angela breaks it first. "You guys, come _on_!" She turns to me. "They're all _adopted._"

"Jasper and Rosalie really are twins, though," Jessica says.

"Yeah, but – "

"And they really _are_ dating each other, all in the same _house_."

"They probably sleep in bunk beds." The clever boy, again.

"Yeah, one on top of the other!"

More nervous and prurient giggles.

"Except for Edward."

"Yeah, he's _gay._"

"No, no, he's doing it with _mommy and daddy_!"

"Ewww!"

Angela looks about the way I feel. My cheeks are burning, and they aren't even talking about me. I don't believe that last part, about Edward with the parents. I know that kind of thing does happen, but not in Forks. Not here. My Dad would never let something like that go on in a town where he was Chief of Police.

"Have they always lived here?" I ask her. I can't believe I wouldn't have heard of such an infamous family if they'd been living in town before, even if I'd only been around for two weeks any one year.

"No, they moved down from Alaska or something, two years ago. Dr. Cullen – he's the dad – works as a surgeon at the hospital."

"Oh my God," a red haired girl at the end of the table joins in. "He is _so_ super-hot. You _have_ to see him. Last year, Lisa Bukowski fell out of a tree and broke her ankle, _on purpose_, just to get onto his examining table."

The boys roll their eyes and groan in disgust. "Only a_ girl_ would do that!"

Angela is still trying to make this all sound normal. "Dr. Cullen's wife can't have kids, so that's why they adopted."

"Is that even legal?" Jessica wonders. "Five all at once? I mean, Dr. Cullen and his wife aren't even thirty yet, I bet. How can they have adopted five kids who aren't even that much younger than them?"

"It's not like real adoption. They're like foster kids. And they had to keep the Hales together because they're twins."

Rosalie and Jasper. Their last name is Hale, then. Or have they changed it to Cullen?

All of this is being said in low, secretive voices. There's no way anyone at the tables around us can hear the words, let alone all the way across the noisy lunchroom – which is where the Cullens are sitting. But the way that everyone is leaning together, it's so obvious. Whisper, whisper, whisper. I wonder what they think of these kids, filling in the outlander on all the 'dirt' about their family. Is _that_ why Edward is hating me on first sight? Because he knows that along with all the stored up old jokes people have, the one thing they'll be most eager to show off to a new kid will be the local gossip? _Maybe he shouldn't have drawn so much attention to himself to start with by saying I stink._

Mike is leaning toward me again and whispering. "Edward really _is_ gay, you know_._"

I do my best to concentrate on my apple, but the juice is stinging my lip, and everything aches going down, and I can't help but glance at that distant table again. They're sitting together, but all looking away. Away from each other, away from the other students, just … away. They remind me of a flock of birds. Ravens. Perched on a pine bough, their large sharp beaks all pointing away from each other, yet still communicating, the way wild things do, by nearness and the inflection of their feathers. The image is so strong that for a moment I see the Raven Dancers at the Pow Wow my Dad took me to, the summer I turned nine. Three men in heavy, painted, wooden beak masks, their bodies hidden by long, grass capes. Squatting and leaping on the impromptu stage. To the sound of rattles and flutes. And the drum.

"When _Lauren Mallory_ asked him if he wanted to go out, he just said, 'You should respect yourself more.' "

The spell is broken, and the Cullens are just five extraordinarily and unfortunately beautiful humans. I look away, but not too soon to see that, even though he is staring into blank space, Edward is still scowling. Like he's looking for something and can't find it. Or listening. Is he trying to listen to what the kids are saying? _Don't even try it,_ I think, _your ears will be on fire for a week_.


	7. Can't Get to Heaven

**Can't Get to Heaven**

Gym class comes right after lunch. It's a total disaster from start to finish. About what I expected, since I am the world's clumsiest human, and in gym class there's no place to hide. But today is actually worse than usual. To start with, I of course don't have a uniform yet, so I am worried about getting my shirt sweaty. There are two more classes after gym – and who knows who I might be sitting next to.

We're doing volleyball, and I can't get it over the net to save my soul. I try to concentrate on not hitting any nearby classmates with my ricochets. Why can't I be in Phoenix, where they only require two years of P.E., and now I'd be able to sit in study hall? Oh, yeah, that's right, I _chose_ to come here.

The real problem is that all through gym class I'm trying to figure out whether I am being too much of a baby if I try to find some way to get out of that Biology class. If it were just the one outburst, I'm over it already. But it's more than that. It's this furious hostility. I'd felt it sitting next to him that whole 50 minutes of class. I felt it at lunch, even across the width of the entire cafeteria. And whatever it is that I have done to offend Edward Cullen, he certainly isn't going to forgive me now that I have sat with the 'haters'.

I honestly don't care whether what the kids said about his family is true or not. It's not incest if you're not related; and the stuff about Edward and the parents _has_ to be bull. _Doesn't it?_ I don't even care if he's gay. Whatever he is, a person can't help who they're attracted to. But he isn't going to care about what I think. I doubt he would even listen if I tried to talk to him.

Ok, I'll tell the truth. I'm just not brave enough for anything as direct as actually talking to him. But that doesn't mean I have to be subjected to poison arrows being shot at me point blank from here to eternity. Every time I think of sitting elbow to elbow with a beautiful boy who hates me, my heart just sinks all the way down to China.

So here I am, plotting and planning and screwing up my courage to go to the office lady and see if I can get switched to a different science class. Any class, as long as it's not with Edward Cullen.

"Bella! Look out!"

I flail with my arms, and almost poke Mike in the eye as he's diving in to save me from the spike that is making some kind of a bee-line for my face.

"Are you ok?"

"Are you ok?"

And we're kind of falling all over ourselves and each other. It would be funny, if I hadn't already had my fill of humiliation for one day. And that settles it. I'm going to the office straight after my last class. There must be some kind of clause in school policy that says students don't have to stay in an environment that wrecks their concentration.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Jessica isn't laughing.

* * *

The last bell rings at 2:15. The sky is gloomy enough that it might as well be sunset already. A wind has picked up that's whipping the almost drizzle across the parking lots. It isn't quite cold enough to freeze, but for sure way colder than Phoenix. I make my way toward the center building with its brightly lit office.

Just before I step through the door, a voice stops me dead. I peek around the doorframe and get a face full of warm air. They must have the heat fan on inside, and it's getting sucked out by the wind and mist at the door. And yes, there is Edward Cullen, with his unruly auburn hair, jacket hanging just right from his angular shoulders, and both hands braced on the office lady's desk, as he leans over her and speaks in the voice of an angel.

"I was wondering if you could help me with my schedule."

I spin back outside and slap my back to the brick wall. My feet tangle up in the turn, and for a sick moment I think that I'm going to fall. The wall saves me.

Oh. My._ God! _That –_ He beat me to it! _I know I should be glad. He's solving the problem for me. But instead I just feel mad. _I_'m the aggrieved party, here, not him. _I'_m the one who got called 'stink' in front of everyone. What is his_ problem?_

He's making a very persuasive case. He's willing to transfer into any of a number of classes – Physics, Chemistry, the other Biology section. Even independent study. I lean against the wall with my eyes closed. His voice is all low and soft and mesmerizing. If it were me, I'd give him the moon. I'm sure the office lady – Mrs. Cope, I hear him call her – would, too.

A girl I don't know brushes past me on the way into the office. She glances at my face apologetically before going through the door. A gust of wind follows her, pulling my hair across my face, and almost around the doorframe. I guess she's interrupted them because there's a silence. Then the girl darts back out and heads toward the parking lots. I hear Edward saying, all polite and proper, "Never mind then, I can see that it's impossible. Thank you for your help." But his voice sounds like someone is strangling him.

Next thing I know, he's pushing out past the door. He turns his face toward me and gives me the blackest look I've ever seen. Really. His irises are so black that I can't see his pupils. At all. They could be fixed and dilated for all I can see. Or nothing but pinpricks.

And his tender, beautiful lips are twisted into a silent snarl. Even the curve of his body as he turns to me seemed to say. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? GET _OUT__!_ I feel the short little hairs on the back of my neck stand straight on end.

And then he's gone. Walking, yet faster than thought, he's getting into that sweet little silver Volvo. The parking lot is pretty empty already – most kids leave school as soon as they can. The silver Volvo peels out of the parking lot without a sound, and looks like it's already doing 6o before it passes the first curve.

I start to slide down against the office building wall, then stop myself. I'll get nothing but wet if I sit down here. And I'm plenty cold enough, already. I tip my head back, knocking it against the brick. Sometimes looking upward can keep tears from falling.

If Edward Cullen with his beautiful face and hypnotic voice and perfect manners can't get a schedule change, what hope do I have? I'm doomed. A whole half-year of sitting next to him. This is so unfair. And he's the one being a baby. It can't be a thousandth as bad for him as it's going to be for me. Even if I smell like a pigsty. Which I don't.

I still have to pass in my registration slips. I go inside, and hand everything to Mrs. Cope. She asks me how my first day was and I say 'great'. You can take that as a lie or the truth, depending how it's said.

My big red monster is waiting faithfully, right where I parked it. Even starts on the first try. I am so grateful. We roll out slowly – I'm still a new driver, you know – and head back to the house.


	8. Raven Saw

**Raven Saw**

_The two-leggeds course through the forest below me, and I follow above. Always when they hunt, these ones leave bounty for us._

_It is the pale-headed one, with his fledgling. Their plumage is as variable as the clouds, but I know their relations by the way that they stand._

_They do not kill, but only run. I follow. The young one shoots arrows of hunger and rage and pain and desire, all through the forest. The trees shrink from him, and he breaks their branches as he passes. The parent does not stop him, but runs him: far, and hard._

_Finally the two stop, many long glides from their nest, in mountains among the clouds. By the ravine where the ice melts last. I choose a dead tree, and bide my time._

_They stand together, talking without sound, as we do. The pale-head places his featherless wing across the back of the immature. The young one flinches away at first, then submits, then curls to the ground. The parent guards him there, with his wing across his back. They know the way of the stones. They stay without moving, until the daylight begins to die in the clouds._

_At the bottom of the ravine, a doe walks carefully._

_The two descend as one, and kill, and feed._

_I rise to call my clan, beating hard against the cold, damp air. For soon it will be night. As we gather and circle above, I see the fledgling disappear into the bright shiny thing. Away it flies, on the black river of no water, river of feasts and death. Away to the north, where snow is._


	9. Yellow Cabinets

**Yellow Cabinets**

My Dad has yellow cabinets in his kitchen. My Mom painted them all, once upon a time. A beautiful, lemon-buttery yellow. Maybe she was trying to import some sunshine. I must have 'helped' her, though I don't really remember it. There's one, slightly smudged little yellow handprint on the linoleum floor, right by the cabinet under the sink. I guess she missed it when she was cleaning up, and it dried and stayed. The linoleum's starting to curl a little bit around the edges, but there it is. I've never asked my Dad if he's noticed it when he carries his dishes to the sink. I don't know which would be worse: for him to say, "Yeah, I know it's there, kiddo", or for him to just give me a blank look. So I never ask.

Right now, I'm rummaging around in these cabinets looking for ketchup. I'm making meatloaf and I have to have ketchup to coat it with.

I'd gone to the supermarket after school and gotten the ground beef, got the eggs, the milk and the breadcrumbs; onions, almost forgot the onions; and then some broccoli and a bag of pretty decent looking potatoes. I knew without looking that there wouldn't be any of those kinds of stuff in the house. But ketchup? Come on. Guys put ketchup on everything. My Dad's got to have that. But the almost empty bottle in the refrigerator is too pathetic, and not enough of it even if it hadn't already separated, and gone moldy around the cap. So he's got to have an extra bottle stashed in a cabinet somewhere. He was an Eagle Scout. I remember. Mom told me. So why isn't he prepared?

After the second rummage through all the cupboards, I wish I'd gone to the library instead of the supermarket. That's what I'd wanted to do in the first place.

All the times that I've moved, books are the only friends I don't have to leave behind. They're always there at the next destination, waiting to say, "Hi." Even in an ends-of-the-Earth place like Forks. The interlibrary loan system is a beautiful thing.

But my old Forks Library card is expired, and I'd have to get a new one, and the wait for a book to come is usually about two weeks anyway. After being insulted and hated and glared at, I needed something _now._ Cold day, cold rain, cold apple in my stomach that had probably been sitting in a refrigerator since last October. I needed a hot meal. So here I am.

Except that I can't find any damn ketchup in my Dad's – no, Mom's – yellow cabinets. It's already 5 o'clock and pitch black outside and still doing this palpable Scotch mist thing, and I really don't want to go out again. Not to mention, Dad will probably panic if he comes home and finds me and the truck both gone.

Third time through, I finally dig out a sad little can of tomato paste from behind a box of Cheez-Its. It's expired, but only by a year. That's never stopped me before. I can do this. I know how to improvise.

* * *

Half an hour later, I hear Dad's cruiser pull into the driveway, tires crunching on the gravel. Cold, wet wind follows him inside. Even around the corner from the foyer to the kitchen, I can feel it. He hangs up his hat like he always does, shrugs out of his Police Chief's jacket, and hangs that up on the hook next to his hat. The gun and holster will get hung over whatever chair he's sitting in, until they go up to their place on the nightstand by his bed. I didn't realize I remembered these things.

He's in the kitchen, now, kind of stopped short, right in the middle between the counters, with the yellow cabinets all around us.

"Hey, Dad."

"Bella." He looks around at what I've been doing. "You don't have to do this, Bella. I was going to take you out to Bessie's tonight."

The diner. I wonder if he's eating there every night, now.

"We can go tomorrow night."

He gives me a long look. I pray for him not to ask me any questions I don't know how to answer, like, "When did you get to be so grown up?"

Finally, he says, "I'll go get cleaned up."

And that's my Dad.

We eat in the breakfast nook, which is a little bow window in the kitchen. I honestly don't remember ever eating in the dining room. But with a real meal on the table, the nook is almost cozy. I'm sneaking little looks at him while his head is down, scarfing the baked potatoes. He looks the same to me, same as I remember. Same dark hair, same dark eyes, pretty fit for a guy pushing forty. I guess he has to be, in his line of work. The skin on his face is changing, though. It looks … weathered. Our silverware, knocking and scraping on the plates, sounds loud, like the windy drizzle outside.

"How was your first day?"

"Ok."

"Kids treat you ok?"

I know what he's fishing for, so I give it to him. "There's a girl named Jessica; she's pretty friendly."

"Jessica Stanley?"

It's got to be her; can't be anyone else, so I just say, "Yeah."

"Her family are good people. Solid."

_Thanks, Dad. Got me in with the solid folks._

But I don't want him to see my expression, which is a weird mix of embarrassed and resigned and grateful for good intentions, so I duck my head down like I need a shorter distance to get the broccoli off my plate and into my mouth.

"Did you call your mother?"

_What?_

"She'll be wanting to know you got here okay."

_I thought _you_ were going to call her._

"I'll call her tonight, I guess."

"Don't call too late. She's an hour later than us, you know."

I do know, actually. I just came from that time zone.

"Ok."

Guaranteed, now, when I check my email, there's going to be five from my Mom since yesterday.

I get up to clear, and my Dad gets up, too.

"I got it, Bells. You go do your homework, now." And he takes the plates and silverware from my hand.

"Thanks, Dad."

"Nice dinner, kiddo. We'll go to Bessie's tomorrow night." And I know that sometime when I'm not looking – maybe when I'm in the shower – a twenty is going to find its way onto my dresser.

* * *

It's only 8:00 Pacific Time when I call my Mom. I really am dead tired. It's the same questions as with Dad, but it takes way longer. A couple of tree branches outside my window are clicking their twigs against the panes.

"Any cute boys?"

Here it comes. The Spanish Inquisition.

"I guess."

"Bella, you're sixteen. It's your time."

Please.

"Is Dr. Callaghan still practicing?"

Dr. _who_?

"He was your pediatrician."

"Mom, I have no idea."

"Have your father take you in. He can prescribe birth control for you if you need it."

"_Mom! _It's the first day. Oh my God!" I can't help squirming under the quilt, which is wrapped around me up to my waist.

"I know, but you want to be prepared. You know how to use a condom, right?"

Jesus Christ, why does she have to say stuff like this? I don't want to think of condoms when I think of Edward Cullen. Not that I, Edward Cullen, and a condom will ever be in the same room at the same time. Ever. But why does she have to gross me out from ever thinking about him again? Or is this a mother's secret weapon for making sure that her daughter dies a virgin?

"Bella?"

"I'm right here, Mom."

"Everyone's doing it, Bella. It's a fact of life with your generation. I don't have my head in the sand. You don't want to be pregnant in high school."

And there it is. Why don't you just say it straight to my face? Dad was a mistake. _I_ was a mistake. If you could, if you _could_, your life would start with Phil.

I know that's not fair. Mom loves me, and she used to love Dad. I'm pretty sure. But since when are feelings ever fair?

"Mom, I got homework." Homework. Your straight-A student. Your honor roll girl, that you're so proud of on your bumper sticker. Doing everything in my power to not be the you that you regret so much. But it's still not enough. You still have to say stuff to me like this.

"I gotta go."

"Okay, sweetie. I'll talk to you again. Wait 'till after nine your time, the minutes are free then."

"Okay. Bye, Mom."

"Bye, honey."

"Bye."

My books are still in my backpack. My hair is still damp from washing. Thank God I did that before this phone call. Now all I can do is curl up under the quilts, and stuff my head under the pillow. It doesn't help. If this keeps up, I may have to join the Cullen coven – except it won't be mascara making black circles under my eyes.


	10. Bridge to Nowhere

**Bridge to Nowhere**

Day two at school begins pretty much like day one.

My Dad left on time for work this morning, so I let myself out of the house. He has no food in his cupboards, but he did make sure to get the front door key copied for me before I came, and there's a spare in a place that I'm not going to tell, because then it wouldn't be a secret any more.

All the way to school I'm telling myself, _I'm not afraid of Edward Cullen_. He can be a jerk all he wants, but he can't bully me. Black glares and stupid outbursts. I've held my own against worse.

As I roll into the school parking lot, the first thing I notice in the gloaming is that the silver Volvo is nowhere in sight. I just want to be sure that I don't park anywhere near it. But it's not there. I squeeze my red monster between a dark green van and a pretty old-looking Taurus. That should keep anyone arriving late from parking next to me.

Turns out there is a bunch of kids hanging out on the other side of the van. I recognize Angela. She's standing next to a vaguely Asian-looking boy with hair down to his shoulders, and the top of his head barely up to her eyebrows.

"Nice ride!" calls one of the other boys there, giving me a "thumbs up." I have no idea whether he's being sincere or sarcastic. I don't know his name either, only that he's black. Another stand-out in Forks, I guess. But the rest of the kids seem to be giving me friendly looks, so I return the "thumbs up," flash a smile at Angela, and scurry off to my locker and class.

The class schedule rotates around because there are more subjects for us to take than periods in a day. So today, Biology comes after lunch. I'm glad that Jessica is being as friendly to me on day two as she had been on day one. Glad I can just drift around with her group and have a table to sit at for lunch.

The gossip has turned to other things besides the Cullens, so I really can't be looking at their table. But I am sure I only count four of them there, the one time I let my eyes slide past them on my way to the salad bar. And Edward isn't one of the four.

Walking back to Jessica's table, I realize that my stomach is all clenched up. Scolding myself doesn't help. Listening to Mike's blow-by-blow of the Sonics game doesn't help, either. I'm_ not _afraid of Edward. I just don't want to be taken by surprise. It looks like he isn't going to be in school for the day. But he does have his own car. He _could_ show up any time. I just want to be ready.

What I'm not ready for is the gaping black hole in the seat next to me in Biology. He's been absent all day. There is no reason whatsoever for me to expect him to suddenly appear for this class. And I'm _glad_ that he hasn't. Relieved. But the space beside me just feels so empty. Had his wound-tight-to-the-breaking-point presence yesterday really been that powerful? No. No way. It has to be me. Worrying and obsessing and trying to think up a smart come-back or two, just in case he might make some other mean remark or gesture to me today. All that fight-or-flight adrenaline, turns out now with no place to go. _That's_ what's making me suddenly feel like a planet that's slipped its moorings and drifted off into space.

Build a bridge, Bella. Get _over_ it.

By the time he comes back to school tomorrow, he's not even going to remember you.

Except that he doesn't come back.

Not tomorrow, or the next day.

Or the day after that.

* * *

Mr. Molina never asks anybody where Edward is, so of course _I_'m not going to. By the end of the week, I know everybody's names in Jessica's group, and also the group by the van – the two kind of overlap a little.

Thumbs-up guy is Tyler. He's one of the "popular" kids. Being cute and on the football team and driving a slick new van probably have a lot to do with that, but he's not as stuck up about it as some I've seen. He gives rides to a lot of kids, and he's nice about it.

Angela has confided in me that she likes that Asian boy, whose name is Eric.

"But he never notices me, Bella. What am I going to do?"

I didn't know how to tell her she was asking the wrong person, so I suggested, "Maybe he's just shy." At which she almost spewed her Diet Coke.

"You've got the wrong Eric! Have you heard the jokes he tells?" Of course I hadn't. Yet. The two of them work on the school newspaper together. That could be a good thing, couldn't it?

And before I know it, my first week of school in Forks is over.

I know where everything is. People have pretty much stopped asking me questions about "What's it like in Phoenix?" and "Why would you ever come _here_?" I was able to dodge out of a school newspaper feature about me, although that involved Eric being pretty mean to Angela, which I didn't like. All the regulars at Bessie's diner have clapped my Dad on the back and asked me if I remember them.

I'm in love with my red monster.

My red monster chugs gasoline like it's going out of style.

The sun never shows his face.

And neither does Edward Cullen.


	11. Harry Clearwater's Famous Fish Fry

**Harry Clearwater's Famous Fish Fry**

On Saturday, Billy Black and his son come to call. I think they're coming to pat the red monster on the fender. But they've brought some really fresh fillets and a bag of fish fry to coat them with, and Dad went to the superette for beer and chips and stuff in the morning. The new flat screen in the den is going to be the main event, once the horsing around is done.

I haven't seen Uncle Billy since I was twelve, the year my Grandma died. He _is_ in a wheelchair now. And it _was_ that right foot. It had been going gimpy on him for ages. Dad said he'd hurt it in some kind of hunting accident when they both were young, and it never fully healed up. Diabetes will do that, I guess – make a wound fester.

Anyway, the doctors cut everything clean off, a little below the knee. Uncle Billy doesn't bother with any lap blankets – even as cold as it is, with the clouds just getting lower and lower – so there's his stump staring me right in the face as his son wheels him up to our front porch. I run down the two steps and give him a hug, just like I used to when I was little. With my face behind his neck, I hope he can't see that I'm fighting not to cry. He smells like tobacco and peppermint. Like his truck. And he gives me a bear hug squeeze right back, just like he always did.

"Good thing you came when you did, Bella," he says, his mellow voice all sober and serious. "Your Dad's been talkin' our ears off about it since July."

I must be still tired from my first week in Forks because that makes me almost tear up, too; but I know he means me to laugh, so I do.

"You remember Jacob."

What I remember best is a fat-cheeked little brown baby, all wrapped up in a wolf pelt. Kind of a dark house – I don't know if it was our own or Uncle Billy's. Lots of interesting smells. Lots of grown-up voices. I couldn't have been more than three.

"We used to make mud pies together," Jacob adds, in case I've forgotten.

I'm not above teasing him. "Yeah, and I taught you how."

Thinking back, pretty much everything he and I had ever used to get into had involved some kind of a mess. I didn't always see him the summers I came to Forks, but the times I did, it seems to me his Mom was always standing there looking at us with her hands on her hips. I guess Jacob is the closest thing to the baby brother I never had.

I'm glad to see that I'm still taller than him. By about a hair. That probably isn't going to last even to the end of school. His cheeks aren't fat anymore, and his hands and feet are already bigger than his Dad's. "All paws and no coordination," Uncle Billy calls him.

And evidently lying about his age so he could get a learner's permit to drive his Dad around in his Auntie's old Buick.

"Uncle Billy, I really like the truck." I have to say it pretty loud, because my Dad's just made some kind of a crack, and Uncle Billy's kind of wheeling around, chasing him on the sidewalk there in front of the porch.

I guess the men heard me after all, because they stop, and then look at each other like they've pulled off some kind of a heist. If they're happy about it, I should be, too, even though the reason I've gotten the truck isn't a good one.

"Thanks, Uncle Billy."

"Happy trails, Bella, happy trails."

"I rebuilt the engine, y'know," Jacob says, as my Dad hauls his Dad backward in the chair, up the steps of our porch. I can see Jacob is pretty proud of himself about the engine. He gives the hood an affectionate slap, and I suddenly feel like this should have been _his_ truck, not mine. Why did his Dad give it to _me_, then?

"Runs good," I say. I want Jacob to know I think he's done a good job. I don't really care about fourth gear, anyway. It's not like I'm Speed Racer, or anything.

"What year is it?" I ask, betting that Jacob will tell me what my Dad hasn't.

"'63 Chevy. The best. She was one hot number in her day."

I hide a giggle behind my hand. Whatever day that had been, it was _wa-ay_ before Jacob's. Even Uncle Billy couldn't have owned this truck when it was new. And the red monster is a _he_, thank you very much.

Talking to Jacob is easy. I feel happy for the first time since coming to Forks. But now he has me curious, too. Because although the paint on the truck is faded almost bare, I haven't found any rust. Certainly there's enough rain in Forks to rust anything metal in _one_ year, let alone forty-some, so I ask.

"How'd your Dad keep it rust-free like this?"

"He put a blessing on it."

"A blessing?"

"Yeah." Jacob looks down and scuffs at the gravel on the driveway with his toe. "My Dad's kinda old school. Elder an' all."

I remember the braid of some kind of grass, hanging from the rear-view mirror. I'd left it there, figuring it was supposed to be there. I open the cab door, now, and reach in to finger the braid. "You mean this thing?"

"Nah, that's just for luck. A blessing is like, with singing, and smoke and stuff."

That calls up images to me. Beautiful images. Maybe on a windswept bluff, overlooking the ocean. When Uncle Billy still had both his feet. An abalone shell with a slow-burning twist of something in its shallow bowl, and a raven's wing. Orcas out to sea. The truck all red against the cool, dark colors of this world. A blanket over Uncle Billy's shoulders.

But that's just me imagining. Jacob is looking a little uncomfortable. "You don't believe in that stuff?" I ask.

Jacob laughs. "I believe in carnauba wax! Every damn weekend. Wax on, wax off!"

I laugh with him. "I guess _I'm_ going to have to do that now."

"Don't worry. I'll teach you." His smile is warm. It makes me feel good. Happy again.

"Thanks, Jacob."

"Bella!" My Dad has come out onto the porch. "Where'd you put the dip, honey?"

I glance at Jacob. "We better go in and help."

"Yeah."

And both of us sort of run our hands over the front fenders on our way back to the house.

* * *

My Dad's den – it's not really a family room, I mean, where's the family? – is very dark. The big new flat screen takes up most of one wall. Opposite is the couch, which I always remember as old. The coffee table is now completely covered with Harry Clearwater's famous fish fry, assorted chips and dips, and two six packs of beer on the floor. Diabetes be damned.

Dad and Uncle Billy are on the couch, trying to figure out which station they want to watch. All the local commentators are having their say about the Sonics shipping out to Oklahoma City, and Uncle Billy is making jokes about that being Indian territory, so he's got no problem with it, and basically they're both acting like a couple of teenage boys with the TV to themselves on a Saturday night. Come to think of it, it _is_ Saturday night.

Jacob and I are on the floor, other side of the coffee table from the beers. All of us are chowing down on the fish. It is good. The den is going to smell like a deep fryer for a couple of days, I can tell.

"Billy," my Dad says, "where the hell'd you get salmon from?"

"I told you, Charlie, I got connections."

"Haven't had a run in these waters since you an' me were kids," my Dad says wistfully. He and Uncle Billy go way back. Mom says Dad enlisted for the Gulf War – that would be the first one, not the one we're in right now – because of Uncle Billy. They served together, while Mom was having me, back here in Forks.

"Y'never know," Uncle Billy answers. "They could come back. If we give 'em half a chance." And Uncle Billy is talking to my Dad, but he's looking at me in a sort of there, not really there kind of way, and I don't like it much. I know all about the salmon. They come upstream to spawn, and die.

Sitting in the dark like this, with the TV screen making dim, flickering light over everyone's faces, the image is too clear in my mind. Too much Discovery Channel.

The fish are big from living 4 years, 6 years in the sea. By the time they've gotten to the headwaters – the ones who didn't get grabbed by bears, or fished by people, or chewed to pieces in the hydroelectric turbines, or battered to death in the rapids – the ones who make it are all raggedy and old. They're dying as they dance their first and last love in the beds of tiny gravel, and the crystal clear water that is too shallow to even cover their bodies. Their gills are half in water, half in air, and they're suffocating as sure as the trout my Dad and Uncle Billy would haul out on their lines. And then it's just the dead bodies, slowly getting picked clean by whatever happens by, and all around them the stars of their children, clinging in endless streamers to the tiny stones. How many of them will escape birds and other fish and even dragonflies, to hatch into fry? And how many of those will ever make it all the way down, only to turn round again when it's time?

Uncle Billy's not looking at me at all, now, but I'm all hot in my chest and my throat and behind my eyes. Why did he have to say that like he did? I want to go outside and run around the house until I feel better, but the afternoon's clouds have let down their rain, and there's nowhere I can go. So I turn to Jacob and say, "Hey, you wanna play some checkers?"

**

* * *

**

_A/N: Heartfelt thanks to Minisinoo for her wonderful story, Cowboys and Indians, in which I learned about the sweetgrass braid. I borrow it here as a prayer bracelet /good luck token for the red truck, with her permission. She states: "The use of sweetgrass is very common among many native people. It's one of the four sacred plants: tobacco, sweetgrass, sage and cedar." If you have a chance to read her Cowboys and Indians, be ready to be moved to tears:__http:(double slash)www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/s/4434193/1/Cowboys_Indians_

* * *

_The practice of creating a sacred space in time, place and mind by burning a fragrant plant (as alluded to in Bella's imagining of Uncle Billy blessing the red truck) is widespread among native peoples of the Americas, and the world._


	12. Sedna's Fingers

**Sedna's Fingers**

_In the Long Night, in the silent darkness of the world beneath the floes, our frozen roof shatters, and death comes to my brother. _

_The ice-walker who takes us in our safe place is invisible – a shock wave in the inky black, a scattering of bubbles, the muffled sounds of struggle. But we know her. We have seen her in the Day. She and her two sisters are slim as dolphins, white as the beluga, cold and deadly as the deepwater sharks. _

_Clouds of sea-floss stream from her head, brushing us as we flee, and mix with the tang of my brother's blood. One thin tendril escapes, to taint the frigid water. That, and no more. For these ones take only the blood, and, like the lamprey, she has captured my brother's hot leak before his wound can call to others._

_A companion waits for her above. A stranger. Unfamiliar. We hear his footfalls, the creaking of the ice above, as he follows the deathbringer, and my brother's weak thrashing._

_The ice-walkers prefer the kin who run above, as they do. The bleating herds. The wolves. Even the great white bear. The blood of these lies closer to the skin, and only fur bars the way – not the impenetrable blubber that shields us from our cold cradle._

_But sometimes, sometimes, the ice-walkers desire us too, for our blood is very rich, and they are sated long on it. The white ones do not wait at our breathing holes, as the warm two-leggeds do. And they have no need of boats. With their own bodies they break our sky. And take. And leave._

_Where are this one's sisters? And is she teaching the new one to hunt us too? And will he stay?_

_Our family scatters now in the dark. My brother's bloodless body sinks below. _

**

* * *

**

_

* * *

_

A/N: Sedna is the Inuit Goddess of the Sea. It is believed that the fish and seals and whales are her fingers. The stories of how that came to pass can be found here: http:/www(dot)rahoorkhuit(dot)net/goddess/goddess_quest/sedna(dot)html


	13. Caught in the Undertow

**Caught in the Undertow**

Second Monday in Forks. I've got to stop counting the days. Way too many ahead of me for that. But actually, I'm easing in, bit by bit.

Dad and I are getting into a kind of a routine – he'll make sure there's some kind of junk food available for breakfast; for dinner either I'll cook or we'll go to the diner; then end of the day is just homework, wash up, and bed. If Uncle Billy and Jacob are going to start coming over every weekend, that could be fun.

At school, too, I have a group to hang out with, and they're nice to me. I can walk the halls without looking like a scared rabbit. I park anywhere that I please now. I have the whole lab table to myself in Biology. In P.E. everybody knows enough to keep the ball away from me, and the chicken maggots in the cafeteria aren't even half bad.

I've also finally stopped expecting Edward Cullen to appear around every random corner and doorway I walk through.

Mike is at my elbow again, piling his tray. I get a sudden thought that next year, when we're all about to graduate, this is what "old times" will feel like.

"So, we missed you at the game, Saturday," he says.

_Game? What … there was a game?_

"Um …" is all that I say. I'm so articulate it scares me.

Mike looks like he's expecting me to say more.

"So, who was playing?" _Our team, obviously. Basketball, right? This is basketball season, or that's what's on TV anyway…_

"I was," Mike replies, perhaps a little too earnestly. _Okay, open mouth, insert foot._

Jessica is right on the spot. "Mike's a forward. He made fourteen points and three assists, and was two for two at the free-throw line." She looks at Mike a little triumphantly. She'd been there. And paying attention. Not like some. _She likes him._

"You should come, Bella," Angela is saying, as we all make our way to a table. She glances at Eric to make sure that he's following. Pimple-under-his-chin kid, Brendan, is right behind. "It's fun," she encourages. "The cheerleaders have a great half-time show this year."

"Yeah, Lauren Mallory was showing off her new tan."

The local beauty, who has been deposed by Rosalie Hale; although apparently she did keep her seat as Homecoming Queen last November. No one would vote for a Cullen. On the other hand, no one calls Rosalie or Alice "slut" behind their backs, either – but only because they're both permanently joined at the hip with their foster brothers. People say other things about that.

Lauren is in my Biology section, although I've never spoken to her. She and Tyler Crowley have two seats right in the front. The jock and the cheerleader are pretty serious students … so much for stereotypes. And I realize that I'm starting to remember peoples' last names, too. That'll be one gold star, please.

"So, the games are like, every Saturday?" I ask.

"Next one's an away game," Jessica supplies.

"You don't have to drive your truck, come with us," Angela invites. "Tyler can squeeze you in."

They're dissing my red monster. Maximum speed 53 miles per hour, on the flat, engine roaring like thunder. Sigh. They don't know about Uncle Billy's blessing, and the good luck grass. The rustproof skin and the warm, dry inside. They wouldn't understand anyway, or else they'd think I'm crazy.

"Must be some kind of record," Jessica mumbles, through a mouth full of celery.

The conversation must have gone on without me. "Record?" I ask.

"Edward. He's ditched a whole week now." She glances at the Cullens' table very pointedly, and I find myself really wishing she wouldn't. Earlier, when we all had walked into the lunchroom, I'd seen Edward's foster brothers and sisters giving me the evil eye. Rosalie, in particular had looked ready to bite nails.

Shelley, the girl who'd called Dr. Cullen the hottest thing in a white coat, is chewing gum and eating at the same time. She twirls a lock of russet hair around one finger. "Just 'cause he's got a perfect 4.0, the teachers let him do whatever he wants."

"He ditches a lot?"

I wouldn't have asked, except for the look that his family had given me. You'd almost think that _I_ had somehow done something to _Edward_ – run him out of town on a rail, or killed him and hidden him in the freezer or something.

"They all do," Eric answers. "Sunny day, never see hide nor hair of _any_ of 'em."

He looks like that had been another feature story he would have loved to do, but nobody had ever had the courage to go and get the interview. Not that there are a whole lot of sunny days in Forks. But kids cooped up in school when the sun _does_ come out would notice – and remember – who was absent.

"Do their parents know they do that?" I promise myself that will be the last prying question I ask.

"It's their _parents_ that take them out of school! They go camping and stuff, can you believe it?"

"Yeah, or the beach," Mike sighs.

I wonder if there are warm beaches anywhere near Forks. Is the sun ever out long enough for a beach to get warm?

"I tried that idea on _my_ parents," Jessica huffs. "Not even!"

"Funny, this is the first time Edward's ditched all by himself," Angela muses, sneaking her own quick glance at the Cullens' table. "Usually they're like, the five musketeers or something."

And today is not sunny.

I think about how fast Edward had been driving when he'd left the school last Monday. He couldn't have gotten into an accident. My Dad would surely have mentioned it. Hell, it would be all over the school.

"Maybe he's sick," I venture. Nobody hears me because Brendan is speaking over me.

"He prob'ly cut an artery by mistake!" Everybody but Angela laughs at that. I feel sick to my stomach.

_He can't be cutting. Why would he?_

Everything that the kids had said about the Cullen family last week floods back into my ears.

"_They're all dating each other."_

"_Edward's gay."_

"_No, no, he's doing it with mommy and daddy!"_

I don't want to believe any of it. But kids have cut themselves for less.

_No! He wasn't wearing any of those wide-band wristwatches, or handkerchiefs, like cutters do._

Except that real cutters don't go for the wrist. They do it where you can't see. On their thighs, or stomachs. Thin, red cross-hatching. And a boy's name. Shallow, oozing. Kelli in 9th grade had shown me hers.

"Finding _E_mo!"

My insides shiver. You have to really dig to get an artery anyplace else but the wrist. I see Edward's fist clenched white-knuckle tight on his thigh; his leg unclothed; pale, smooth skin over taut muscle; a horribly deep gash, red blood gushing and spurting. _Keep your eyes open, look at your food, anything. _Anything to put a different image in my head. _Don't throw up._

"Nah, he's prob'ly just gone clubbing in Seattle."

"Yeah, on his _knees!_"

I can't stand it. I have to leave. The pictures are running crazy, like a bad movie behind my eyes.

Edward on his knees. Horrible men doing horrible things to him. Making him do horrible things. White-skinned Edward bleeding out red on cold white tile somewhere.

I want to run, but there's no place to go to. No _one_ to go to.

"Oh, hell," I lie. "I left my Trig homework in my locker. Catch you guys in class."

Girls' bathroom again. How pathetic is that?

* * *

In the end, I decide to use my mother's paranoia about birth control to try to get my Dad to talk about the Cullen family. Well, sort of. Our dinner conversation goes like this:

"Mom's worried that I don't have a doctor here in Forks. You know, in case I break my arm or something." (Hey, _that_ could happen.)

Dad frowns, and I'm afraid that I'm busted right here.

"If anything like that happened, I guess I'd be sure it was Carlisle that saw you."

_Uh oh. Who's 'Carlisle'?_

I guess Dad sees my puzzled look.

"That would be _Dr. Cullen_ to you, kiddo," he says with a grin.

Pounce!

"He's good?"

"Best there is, for my money. When the Wheeler boys were in that wreck last year, it was Carlisle put them back together again. Man's a miracle worker."

A sudden thought comes to me. "Did he take care of Uncle Billy?"

Dad shakes his head. "I wish he would've. Billy might still be walking today if he'd of let Carlisle touch him."

_What does __**that**__ mean? _"Why didn't he?"

"I love your Uncle Billy, Bella, but he's a superstitious man. Stubborn, too."

"Oh."

Dad isn't biting. I'd have to pry to get more. I need to get to Dr. Cullen's family first, before my Dad clams up altogether. Maybe Jacob will tell me more about his Dad … some other time.

"Dr. Cullen has kids in school, I think…"

"Yeah, I think one or two are in your grade."

"They kind of keep to themselves … or … that's what I've heard."

Dad gives me a sharp look. Almost angry. "I'm sure you've heard more than that, Bella."

"Kinda …"

"Forks is a small town, baby. Folks here sometimes just aren't used to seeing people who have as much going for them as the Cullens do, especially outsiders. Looks, talent, money – sometimes it seems like too much good luck for one family to have all to themselves. So some folks go looking to find fault. Makes 'em feel better, I guess. But Carlisle is a brilliant surgeon. Best I've ever seen. And I guess I've seen a few."

Dad gets quiet for a second. I don't dare breathe. He and Uncle Billy never talk about their time _over_ _there_.

"Point is, he could name his hospital and name his price. UCLA, Mayo, Johns Hopkins, you name it. But he chose to come to Forks. And work for the same pay as the rest of the staff here. He and Esme are good people, Bella. Generous. That's why they took in those kids."

"I'll admit, when they first came to town – five teenagers all in one household, and system kids at that – I had my thoughts. Maybe I had my eye on them a little. It's my job. But they're good students, every one of 'em. Never been in a lick of trouble, this whole two years. Polite, too. Look you straight in the eye when they talk."

"And Esme's a born mother. She can't have kids of her own, but she and Carlisle are doing right by these five."

I can't believe my Dad said all that. All by himself.

"So, I guess I shouldn't believe everything I hear …"

"No you shouldn't." He gives me another long look. "But if something's bothering you, you can tell me, Bells, you know that."

"Thanks, Dad." I already have, and I have a feeling he maybe knows, though no one is letting on.

"Yeah, well, go do your homework then. I'm gonna watch the news before I turn in."

I give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

"G'night, Dad."

It isn't that hard at all.

I go upstairs to my room.

And hang on to my Dad's words like a life raft the rest of the night.


	14. Parsifal

**Parsifal**

We can never wholly forget what we are. But we have become very adept at pretending to be what we are not.

We pretend to be children. But we are not.

We pretend to be human. But we are not.

We pretend to live normal lives, but we do not. Not even among our own kind are the lives that we lead called normal.

"It's going to be alright, Edward. I'm pretty sure." Alice's hand is under my elbow. Jasper looks on, doing his part to project the reassurance that Alice has spoken. Because she has asked him to.

_Why did I come back?_ I have always disliked the places where there are many people – schools, office buildings, hospitals – the places where I have spent so much of my time over the decades. Now Fate has given me the perfect excuse to disappear for a few years into the relative solitude of the North. Tanya and her sisters are kindred spirits with my own family. I could live with them as long as I pleased. Esme was heartsick to see me leave, of course, but even she understood. And if Tanya's unrequitable thoughts toward me should become unbearable, I have the entire Arctic to range where I will. To dwell like a hermit among the beasts of the tundra and the sea, until this dreaded cup might finally pass from me. This unholy Grail. This girl. This Isabella.

We leave our vehicles behind, and slouch across the parking lot towards school.

It starts. Even here, in the drizzling open air. The heady smorgasbord of scent. Blood. Human blood. In every shade and tenor of possibility. Even amid the exhaust fumes, the oil drips, and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich lying crushed under books in one boy's knapsack – the blood overrides everything. They douse themselves with other odors – soaps and shampoos and creams, deodorants, colognes and perfumes – anything to mask the alchemy of sweat and pheromones and bacteria. It works for them. But not for us. Their bodies are open books to us. And under it all, through it all, clarion and compelling, is their _blood_. No flesh can mask it, no skin can seal it in, no clothing, not even concrete walls, can completely hide the scent of human blood from a vampire.

My mouth waters, with a venom more baneful than any witch's curse. I hear my brothers and sisters swallowing. Another day at school begins.

"No point gittin' all distempered 'bout it, Ed-boy," Emmett says, laying on the patois of his erstwhile life as thick as mayonnaise, teasing me with it. "Iff'n I was ye, I'd jest have her 'n be done." That's what he did do, actually. His mind harks back, with the total recall of our kind, and I succumb to my gift, which shows me his memory as he lives it again, jumping out at me against the cacophony of thoughts from the school population at large. It is as vivid and complete as if it were my own ...

_The perfect, soft evening in May. Blue sky, with puffy clouds just starting to take on hue. New green on the treetops, shot gold by a sinking sun. The scent of an apple orchard in bloom. _

The kind of evening that makes anyone with a heart in his chest ache for its beauty.

_Shadowed dirt road underfoot, and a tender, shifting breeze, that carries the snap of clean laundry on a line … and the ambrosia of blood._

Not just any blood. But _The Blood_. The one you wait a lifetime for. The one that haunts your eternity. The one that, once you've smelled it, you will not rest until you find it and capture it and have it all. The one that you wish will never end. But of course it does, because the human body does not hold but twelve pints at the very most.

_She never saw him. He hit her like a freight train. The taste, the smell, the glory. Hot. Sweet. Gushing at first. Indescribably delicious. _

"Stop it Emmett!" Alice hisses. "You're not helping!" She cannot see his memory, as I do, but staggers, instead, under a bloody kaleidoscope of futures; rushing toward us as the song of Emmett's kill calls forth an answering chorus from the darkest pits of my own mind. For I can _smell_ the Swan girl. I have _been_ smelling her since we arrived at the school parking lot. From somewhere inside the building her blood calls to me, like a brightly pulsing beacon through the fog of all the others. Absence has done nothing but sensitize me to her all the more keenly. The red truck is hers. How appropriate.

Cursed to feel the feelings of those around him, Jasper is pole-axed by my and Emmett's combined lust. Valiantly he tries to stem the dreadful tide with anything he can find – remorse, renunciation, resolve.

_He never even registered her face – what was left of it – until after he had emptied her. Just an ordinary woman in her middle years. Perhaps already a grandmother, given her circumstances, and the times in which she lived. Gone to gather her family's linens before the dark should wet them down with dew._

Emmett buried her, of course. A hundred miles away, of course. We do our best not to leave traces.

_Calico apron that she had probably made herself, disappearing as he wound her in the one sheet that had caught a bit of red spatter on its edge. Double handfuls of dank brown dirt, thrown down on the white-wrapped form._

My mind transposes a young girl's frame into the impromptu grave.

The entire vision, from start to finish, has taken no more time than the span of us walking, at human speed, three steps across the asphalt ground.

Jasper's influence has made Emmett uncharacteristically pensive. "I don't regret it, y'know? She'd be dead by now, jest the same, even if I hadn'a taken her then. And if I'da left her be, I'd be kickin' myself from here to kingdom come and back for passin' her over, what with her gone forever now, and no chance ever again, and not even the memory of her taste to keep me. I _don't_ regret it, Eddie. Their lives is short, anyhow."

I think of myself a hundred years from now, two hundred years, when this girl and her blood and bones are nothing but dust. Lost to me forever, and eternity still yawning before. Is _this_ why I have come back? To claim at least the moment's rapture, and then the memory, ever more?

Their lives is short, anyhow.

Rosalie has no patience for any of this. She is thinking, quite pointedly, _Get over yourself Edward. Do or do not. There is no __**try**__._

We have almost reached the doors to the main building. "Stop it, both of you!" Alice is seeing the future shift under the influence of Emmett's words and Rosalie's thoughts. She tries to hide her visions from me. There is no hiding. The gruesome futures she sees originate in my own, terribly fertile imagination.

Emmett thinks he knows better than Alice. He continues silently.

_Carlisle'll forgive ye. Ain't like ye'd be goin' on a rampage or somethin'. _

No, I've done that already. After a fashion. Back in the oh-so-well-named "Roaring Twenties" … It wasn't what I had thought it would be. And still Carlisle and Esme forgave me. And still I don't know why.

_She's only one girl. _

Only one. But an innocent, I imagine … or as innocent as girls these days can be. Not what they once were, when they used to be … but certainly not a predator, like ….

Like me.

_She'd follow ye._

Oh, indeed she would. Any and every girl in the entire school would trip after me in panting bliss. I can hardly imagine, let alone expect, this one to be any different. Ninety years mingling among humans, and the combined memories of all my family members, have taught me just how invincible are the charms of our kind.

_Ye could take her someplace far away, Alberta or some-like. Bury her out on the prairie somewheres when ye're done._ _Fast as ye run, ye could be back in time for school right next day. And nobody findin' her fer months. If ever. We wouldn' even have to move._

Silently, secretly, Jasper's tactician mind is running in parallel with Emmett's. The best defense is a decisive offense. Take control of the terms of engagement.

Cut your losses before they can become catastrophic.

I catch the tail of Alice's thoughts, private, plaintive. _She was going to __**like**__ me._ _We were going to be __**friends**__._

_

* * *

_

This is intolerable. I want to run again. But I know it's no use. Isabella Swan exists in the world. And I have found her.

Like a bit of sea foam, frothing on the waves of her classmates' thoughts, her image was first cast ashore onto my mind, even before I had laid eyes on her myself.

The new kid. The shiny new toy, thrown among a pack of six-year-olds. In fact, utterly ordinary. Just another slip of a brown-haired girl. Walking about with the hunched, tentative posture of a creature far from its home.

Did she even guess how little these busybodies knew, or cared, about her? How she was barely more than an object to their curiosity? Or, for the boys, intimations of lust? I had no idea. Her own thoughts were lost to me amid the general babble. Not that I'd cared to sift through it all. The intrigues of these human children were of no consequence to me. Isabella – 'just Bella' she had said, all morning long, to each new acquaintance in turn – was of no consequence to me.

Until she'd stood in front of that devil's own fan. And smashed my precious indifference to pieces. Now the entire planet is nothing more than a vast labyrinth, whose every twisting path begins and ends with her crimson scent.

We have sauntered indoors, into the bright, warm hallways. The other students unconsciously give us space, avoid our eyes. Shards of thought assault me from every direction. How I hate the crowded spaces. I shut out the voices, as I have learned to do. Just as we all have learned to shut out the enticement of so much blood, so many beating hearts, under our very noses. To pass among the hot, throbbing herd, untouched and untouchable. Most of the time.

"So, Alice," I say, and I don't mean to mock, but I do, "How sure is 'pretty sure'?"


	15. Hungry Eyes

**Hungry Eyes**

There is someone sitting in my seat in Biology. Both seats are occupied, as a matter of fact. By Tyler Crowley, and a girl whose name I don't know yet, with a microscope on the table between them. Today is mitosis day. I just stand inside the doorway to the classroom, blocking traffic and staring stupidly. _Now_ where am I supposed to sit?

I scan the room, looking for an empty seat, wondering why Tyler and that girl have moved in on my table. That has to leave two unoccupied chairs hanging around somewhere or other.

And then I see him. He's sitting way in the back, in the last row, in the seat next to the window. Still so beautiful it makes my chest hurt. Just like last time, our eyes meet for a split second. Just like last time, he jerks his gaze violently away, and stares out the window. It's open a crack, actually a little more than a crack, and the only explanation I can think of for him to put himself in front of that cold, rainy draft is …. that I stink.

_What is his __**problem**__?_

The scraping of chairs and the scuffling around of books and backpacks is swirling in my ears, and I can feel the rims of my eyes getting red. I don't see Mr. Molina until he's right beside me.

"Isabella, I'm having you sit over here from now on." And he sort of guides me to the one empty place left, in the front row, right by the door. Catty-corner and the farthest possible spot away from Edward's seat in the whole room. I can hear a little current of murmuring and snickering going on. I'm not the only one who "gets" the diagram that has been drawn here.

Mr. Molina is looking at me in a warning kind of way, like he's already had it with students and seat assignments. "You're not going to give me any trouble about this, are you Isabella?"

"No, no. I'm not." _I'm too dazed to object._

I sit down in my new seat, next to Lauren Mallory, and the microscope she and I will be sharing. The tan does look good on her. It contrasts with her hair. But in Forks it's pretty obvious that she must have gone to lie in an ultraviolet coffin over the weekend to get it.

"Douche bag."

_What?_

"Not you. Edward fucking Cullen." Maybe if she controlled her language just a little bit, people wouldn't say such nasty things about her. Or then again, they might think she was easy to pick on.

"Thinks he's God's gift. Even the teachers make us play musical chairs just on his say-so."

I can't stop myself from asking, "What did he say?"

Mr. Molina is passing out slides to go with the microscopes, so Lauren has to whisper.

"He _has_ to sit next to the window," rolling her eyes and making finger quotes at the words _has to,_ "otherwise he might get an afflack attack."

All I can think of is ducks.

"I don't know," Lauren explains, "some kind of allergy thing."

Anaphylaxis? Who is he kidding? _Stop my breathing and slit my throat …!_

"He got his doctor dad to write a note. I can't believe Molina went for it."

Luckily, Mr. Molina is by now halfway to the back of the room, explaining the lab. We are supposed to look at each slide, and identify which stage of mitosis the cell is in on each one. The first pair of partners to identify all of the slides correctly will get the big golden onion on Mr. Molina's desk. This is supposed to be cute because the cells we're looking at are onion root tip cells, which, when the root is growing, divide very rapidly, and you can get plenty of samples of every stage of mitosis from them.

I've already done this lab in Phoenix, freshman year, with whitefish blastula. With Edward back, and apparently determined to escalate his campaign of humiliation against me, bored _and_ in tears suddenly seems like a real possibility.

_What does he __**want**__ from me? _

I try with everything I have not to get depressed. That pretty much leaves angry as the only other option. Sitting in the front here I don't have to look at him, EVER. _Good._ He, on the other hand, sitting in the back, has hardly any choice but to see me for the whole class. _Hah! So there! Hope I'm a needle in your eye!_ My invisible spirit self turns around and sticks out my tongue at him, just for good measure.

I glance over at Lauren, as she puts the first slide on, She seems like a pretty blunt person. Of course, what I am about to ask her is pretty stupid. Social suicide, actually. But at this point I hardly feel like I have anything left to lose.

"I think it's anaphase," she says, after squinting into the eyepiece. "Does that look like anaphase to you?" I look at her. She's actually asking me. That decides me. I ask her.

"Do I stink?"

She does a double take worthy of Loony Tunes. Then she glances back at Edward – _NO, don't look at him, ah Jesus Christ! – _and then back at me. She actually sniffs at the side of my neck, and wrinkles her nose a little bit, then shakes her head.

"He's just a dumbass."

* * *

There she is. Her eyes widen. From the back of the room I see every detail of her brown irises – the delicate, almost ebony radial striations, the rich hints of mahogany in the rings of annular fibers – as her pupils dilate ever so slightly, her eyelids flown back.

The moment is past, literally, in the blink of an eye, as we both look away. Once again, we have taken each other by surprise. At least she is not standing in front of that stupid fan. And her lip has long since healed. Her lip that was so nearly both of our undoing. Nearly made the evening news.

_Unbelievable tragedy rocks Forks High School today, leaving 21 students and one teacher dead, in what appears to be the most horrific case of animal attack ever on record._

Yes. I was ready to plow through _all_ of them, just to get her to myself _right then and there_. Only Alice jumping into my head had stopped me.

_Edward, NO! You CAN'T!_

And she had shown me what she saw. The parents hysterical with grief. Carlisle and Esme too: for what had I done? And what had I become? The search parties, fruitlessly combing the surrounding forests for the only two members of the class not identified among the bodies. And myself, deep in the mountains of Idaho, huddling possessively over the tattered remains, until they began to stink.

As I did that morning, I cling again with all my might to Alice's vision. My pathetic and disgusting self, groveling and hoarding over a disintegrating bit of carrion. The medics puking and fainting. The parents' wails. Alice had recruited Jasper to flood it through and through, with the nausea, the horror, and the crushing, inconsolable loss. I cling to that, as well.

Her heart beats, a little bit too fast. Her breath sighs, softly, into and out of her chest. Her clothing rustles. Her chair creaks. Her eyelashes whisper like butterfly wings against her cheek. And her blood. Her blood. Her blood. Her blood. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Her blood. Her blood. Her blood. So sweet. So perfect. So right. Just for me. Just for me.

Just for me.

_Edward, NO! You CAN'T!_

Consequences!

Alice sends me shadows of things worse than moving. Visitors from Italy. _Our_ family broken, too …

Consequences.

I keep my nose pointed out the window every moment that I can. Between the cool air bringing in the resin of the distant pines, and the fan at the back of the room blowing past me toward the front, I have contrived to be firmly upwind of that one infernal seat. It helps a little. When I absolutely _have_ to face front (the teacher _does_ glance at me from time to time) I hold my breath, and hate that girl. Yes, I hate her with a fervent passion. Why did she have to be born? Or if she simply had to be born, why couldn't she just stay in Phoenix where she belonged, where her path and mine would never, _ever_ cross?

And, as if God himself has appointed her my personal nemesis, her mind is closed to me. I cannot hear a single thought. Not even a whisper.


	16. Vol de Nuit

**Vol de Nuit**

I cannot leave school fast enough. Walking slowly enough not to startle the humans around me is excruciating. I finally reach the refuge of my Volvo, only to find Alice slipping into the passenger seat beside me, and Jasper in the back. His thoughts betray him. He is here as much to protect Alice as to help her influence me. I am that far gone, and he knows it. I can feel him grappling with my turmoil, trying to tame it. For his own sake, truth be told, as much as for mine.

"What is this?" I snap, as I turn the key in the ignition. He's not even _trying_ to be subtle. As my anger rises, I feel him throw twelve layers of goose down around me, and bundle me tight. I hate it.

"We're going hunting," says Alice, "right?"

As if I hadn't already hunted this very morning. As if she hadn't seen _exactly_ where my runaway thoughts were leading me at the sound of the last bell – even with my belly still brim-full of deer blood. Like Little Red Riding Hood's wolf, taking the short-cut to her father's house. At the rate her truck travels, _any_ road would be a short cut! Hiding my car, waiting for her … where else but in her own bed? In a horrid little flash of humor, I see myself with the covers drawn up to my nose, and an old-fashioned nightcap on my head.

Alice is gripping my arm tightly, digging in with her fingers to pull me back.

"Hurricane Ridge", she whispers.

Why not?

We leave the school parking lot at a highly illegal speed.

* * *

Route 101 skirts the northern border of the park, taking us all the way to Port Angeles before the right-hand turn that leads back into the reserve. Alice wants to get me as far away from Forks as she can while I'm still confined in an automobile with her and Jasper. She wants the familiar smell of kin to wash away my memory of Bella's scent. It can't.

As we approach the switchbacks, I can hear Rosalie and Emmett's thoughts ahead. I'd never even seen them leave the school.

"What is this, Alice," I growl, "an _intervention_?"

"Do you really want to kill her, Edward?"

"Of course not!"

Why else did I flee to Denali, and beyond, past the Arctic Circle, to where no light that ever touched her skin could reach me? For all the good that it did.

The distance closes as I negotiate the steep turns in the mountain road, my silent brother feeding me wave upon wave of calm from behind. _As bad as a newborn, _he thinks.

Soon, Rosalie and Emmett's voices begin to sound in my ears as well as in my head.

"C'mon Rosie", Emmett cajoles. "It'll be fun, might be we'll even meet us up with some b'ar."

"_Bar?_" My sister's voice drips with sarcasm, but my brother is unabashed.

"Yep! Baarrrrrrr!" And he purposely rolls the r's into a drawn out growl.

"Emmett McCarty, you are the most incorrigible man I have ever met, BAR _none_!"

Through his eyes, I see her slap his arm, and through her eyes I see him jump on her, face alight; sending them both to the ice-hard ground in a rolling, growling tussle. Alice cannot help but smirk, since the whole exchange was audible to all of us. Once again, Emmett has succeeded in distracting Rosalie from one of her piques. I do believe, if it were not that we strive so devotedly to leave no trace, Emmett would surely be the class clown wherever we go to school. Even the teachers would love him … and remember him, which is best not done. _Perhaps that is what he once was when he was alive_, I think; although it is hard to know how much formal schooling a boy might have gotten, growing up in the mountains of Tennessee when he did. My mind conjures a Norman Rockwell image of a little red schoolhouse … and I realize that Emmett has succeeded in distracting me, as well.

The service track below the visitor center comes up quickly, and I almost miss it.

_Dammit, Emmett, did you ever stop to think that my Volvo can't clear snowmobile ruts the way your jeep can!_

Most of the roads and campsites of Olympic National Park are closed at this time of year, and the rest are as close to deserted as they will ever be. Still, there is no point in taking any chances. We hide our vehicles, and step out into the waning afternoon. It is overcast, so we have barely an hour of daylight left. Not that it matters to us.

We line out across the frozen slope, crossing patches, and soon, drifts, of snow, among the thinning trees. Barefoot, of course, to spare our shoes.

The air is very cold, and there is no smell of anything human. I let Alice take the lead. She obviously has something in mind, although she is hiding it from me by reciting the Ramayana to herself, in Sanskrit. Jasper shadows her, matching her stride for stride – no mean feat when his legs are so much longer than hers – yet he does so with the perfect grace of our kind, a tall, blond doppelganger at her side. He has picked up on the hypnotic effects of the rhythmic verses she is silently chanting, and, in perfect tandem, reflects that back against the perverse bloodlust I am feeling. I let them do this to me. Let Rosalie and Emmett herd me from behind. Let the pristine mountain air begin to cleanse my senses at last.

We jog at a pace that is downright leisurely, yet it carries us across the steep ground like wraiths of wind. In minutes we have cleared the last stands of stunted trees and emerged to the bare ridge-tops. Alice has ignored all the smells of game along the way. It hardly matters. None of us is actually _thirsty_ – not even I. Perhaps all she wants is just to run the craving out of me. But why? Why is she trying so _hard_?

We course along in a frozen world between clouds: the shifting mists below us, the high overcast above, a treacherous, slanted terrain of rock and snow and wind-bared ice underfoot. Five unholy ghosts.

"Why, Alice?"

She looks at me over her shoulder, then runs on.

"She's just another human. She's no different from any of the others. Why do you care about this one so much?"

Alice refuses to answer. Behind me, Emmett and Rosalie are getting bored. They have begun wiggling their eyebrows at each other, and teasing each other in American Sign about what they will do together, and who will get the upper hand, once Alice lets them off of this wild goose chase.

My thoughts slip back to this morning, in the school parking lot.

_She was going to __**like**__ me._ _We were going to be __**friends**__._

Impossible. _Their lives is short_. And the time that we can allow acquaintance with any of them is shorter still. Never more than a handful of years at most. Lest anyone see how unchanging we are.

Alice shifts direction slightly, carrying us over the crest of the ridge and diagonally down the other side. She is reciting furiously – the abduction of Sita, Rama's grief – and still her vision slips through.

Herself and Bella, leaning against each other, their arms about each other's waists. The image flickers past in a flash, dim and uncertain, shaded in umbers, as if some old daguerreotype. It's impossible. A mistake. An illusion. There is no way that it can be true. And _still_ I am jealous. Why does Alice get to see a vision of such sweet affection, when all that I can see – and feel and taste and smell – is my teeth making carnage of a tender throat, and Bella's lifeblood pulsing into my eager mouth? It's not fair.

"It's not fair," I say aloud.

"You can choose, Edward. You can _choose._" Suddenly she points with her chin. "There!" A mile away, on the next upward fold of mountain, a handful of grey dots against the white snow. A herd of bighorn sheep. Their eyesight is almost as keen as ours, when it comes to detecting movement, and they know us for what we are. Already they have begun to flee at a fast trot. We could burn a path to them in seconds, down our slope and up theirs, spreading like a net to encircle them, but Alice doesn't lead us that way. She angles at a tangent to the herd's course, matching their pace, but just a little faster. Rosalie and Emmett are too bored with it all to care. So long as they keep me in line, their duty to Alice and her schemes is done. They can devote the rest of their thoughts to each other.

The tenor of Jasper's emotion stream has changed subtly. I see that now his fingers and Alice's are entwined.

"You're meaning to walk them down, then," he murmurs to her. Images of old plains Indians flash through his mind. If a man didn't have a horse, he could get one this way.

Alice nods.

"What're you going to do with them when you get them?"

"I don't know."

_No, Alice, you don't get to drag me out here like this and then not talk to me._

I interrupt as rudely as can be. "Maybe I _don't_ have a choice in this, Alice."

I think of Emmett. He hadn't even _thought_ of choosing. He had just _acted_. So had Esme, when she had met hers. Soft, gentle Esme, kindest of us all, even Carlisle.

"Maybe there's no escape for me."

The distance to the sheep herd has closed significantly. They are on a northeast-facing slope, now, and already shrouded in dusk. The whites of their rumps make ghostly twinned half-moons against the pale grey-tan of their haunches, as they continue away from us through deep snow.

"It won't go well with you if you hurt her Edward."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"It will be bad for you."

She's not talking about moving, or Carlisle heartbroken, or even the Volturi. There's something else…

As if _she_ had read _my_ mind, Alice adds, "You'll wish you_ hadn't_, and it will be _too late_."

"How do you know?"

"I've seen it."

"Show me."

Alice turns her head to look at me again, and I see my own face through her eyes: staring back at her, filled with conflict and doubt, and unspeakable craving to quit this whole expedition and race back to Bella's house. If I leave now, at dead run as the crow flies, I have just enough time to snatch her away before her father gets home.

"I only see her death, Alice."

"Look _harder_."

"No! _Leave me alone!_"

"Stay with him, Jasper!"

As if any of them could keep up with me if I _really_ wanted to run! I let them bunch around me, let them herd me, just as we are herding the wild things ahead of us.

The forced trot continues, angling across spine after spine of the Olympic range, until darkness falls. We are far inland now, almost in the center of the entire peninsula, and the overcast has cleared, Stars glitter in a pitiless black sky, waiting for the moon to rise. We have walked the herd down. What aboriginal humans might have needed days to accomplish, we have done in the space of a few hours. The animals are overheated (even in this frigid night), because they can't sweat, and have had no respite even for a mouthful of snow. They lie about on the ground, or stand, panting blood and steam. Exhausted. Accepting the death that they know us to be.

Alice turns to me. "Well?"

I stare at the poor creatures. I have no quarrel with them. I'm not even thirsty. None of us are. Why should they die just because I am denying myself what I really want?

The night wind swirls, lifting the fine surface powder from the tops of the snowdrifts, coating us in diamond dust. It doesn't melt. We are as cold as the air.

I stare at the ground and shake my head. "Let's just go home."

Rosalie rolls her eyes and mutters, "Well _that _was an exercise in futility!"

But Bella Swan is safe for a night.

* * *

A/N: Vol de Nuit (Night Flight) is a story by the French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in 1931 and became an international bestseller. ~ _Fabien is an airmail pilot of the Patagonia Mail. He has to deliver mail in Argentina during a thunderstorm. The story is told from the viewpoint of his employer, Riviere, who forced him to fly that night in spite of the danger, because the mail must go through. As the storm worsens, Riviere keeps contact with Fabien via radio. The situation at hand becomes more and more dangerous, and their dialogue on the static-filled radio makes it clear that Fabien is bound to die. Then the radio messages cease, and Riviere can not do more than calculate when Fabien is going to crash._

_"We don't ask to be eternal. What we ask is not to see acts and objects abruptly lose their meaning. The void surrounding us then suddenly yawns on every side."_


	17. Dance of the Hours

**Dance of the Hours**

I survived Edward's return to school. The girls all agree that he's a dumb-ass. The boys say he's a queer-ass. The Cullens have lived in Forks for two whole years, and still no one talks to them. Except for intrepid souls like Lauren, I guess, who got shot down. (I wonder what century Edward is living in, that it's illegal for a girl to ask a boy out?) The Cullens don't talk to anyone either, unless they absolutely have to. They're always together. It's like they're their own little clique – the wagons permanently in a circle. Everybody thinks it's because they think they're too good for the rest of us. I don't think so. I think it's something else. Something about a family like a jigsaw puzzle, put together from broken pieces. And maybe something about moving from place to place, too. Something that I would understand.

Edward is never alone. There's always one brother or sister with him, often more. Except in Biology class. There, he sits by himself in the corner, staring out the window. Probably wishing he were someplace else. Anywhere else, except this godforsaken place where everyone is thinking nasty things about him … if they think about him at all. I wouldn't have thought nasty things about him … if he'd given me half a chance.

When I come into Biology class, now, I keep my eyes on the floor right in front of my feet. Then on my chair, my desk, my books. Until I get settled and facing front. Then, I'm free. What is behind me is unimportant.

* * *

I am stalking the Swan girl.

No jury would convict me.

I do it purely in self-defense.

"_But are you certain that this is a good idea?" Carlisle asks quietly. His mind shies away, but still, glimpses of memory flash through, of another time when I stalked humans. It was not in self-defense._

"_What choice do I have?" _

I am _not_ afraid of Isabella Swan. But I _cannot_ afford to be surprised by her. _She_ cannot afford for me to be surprised by her. There must be _no_ chance encounters, no _forgetting_ myself in the shock of finding her in my path, as I turn a corner, or walk through a doorway. And so, I keep track of exactly where she is, and what she is doing, and, most importantly, _where she is headed_, at all times.

_Carlisle remains deeply uncertain about the manner in which I am keeping her close. "You think to … inoculate yourself against her somehow? To build up a tolerance?" His mind flits through entire textbooks on immunology and endocrinology … downregulation of receptor sites in the presence of elevated concentrations of the allergen, or hormone._

But our bodies are not human flesh. We do not follow the patterns of mortal physiology ...

"_I'm __**not**__ exposing myself to her," I answer. _

Just the opposite in fact. I lie hidden, peeping at her through the eyes and ears of her classmates. If only she knew.

"_I'm just keeping track of her. That's all."_

It's only fair. Hadn't _her_ scent followed _me_? All the way to the frozen north, tickling my memory, haunting the eternal sleeplessness of my existence. Justice, and nothing more, then, that I have returned now, only to hunt her every step.

_Carlisle's eyes soften. "You are determined, aren't you", he murmurs, "to vanquish this, somehow."_

"_Yes!" And my muted cry echoes in my chest, long after the sound waves have dissipated to silence._

Seven minutes to homeroom bell, and the lot of them are loitering outside the school again, with Tyler Crowley and his parents' green van. Though I and my siblings are still a few minutes from arriving, I freely borrow Jessica Stanley's sight and hearing to monitor Bella's movements. I would rather eavesdrop through the thin girl, Angela, but she is late today. Damn it.

It is a messy, messy radar. Not only Jessica's thoughts, but those of all the others in the group as well, hover and whine like gnats in the air, intruding on any observation I might strive to make. Only Bella's mind is silent. She is utterly still, like a fathomless well.

Jessica is speaking. She does that quite a bit.

"Did you guys hear what happened to Elliot Turner?"

"No, what?"

"He got suspended!"

"_Elliot?_ What the hell?_  
_

Jessica continues. "He brought screwdrivers to school … in a HIP FLASK!"

Jessica's eyes show me Michael Newton, nearly doubled over with laughter. "Oh my God, what an _idiot_!"

The Crowley boy joins in. "Yeah, can't use a Fanta bottle like the rest of us!"

I hear their laughter through all their ears. Bella's voice is nowhere among them.

Newton offers his best imitation of Jon Heder in that bizarre comedy. "Freakin' _idiot!_"

More laughter.

Bella can barely be heard. "Is that the first time he's done this?"

"Who knows?"

"Who _cares_?"

Jessica sends a pitying glance at Bella, and my mind is completely filled by the blush that I see rising on her face.

The day that we left Alaska for Forks, Alice had predicted snow. Perfect cover for our travel. It was late January, and the morning twilight lasted for hours. I'd had nothing to do, nothing to think, and had sat in a snowdrift, watching the sky change from featureless black to milky white. The sun was to come up for the first time in two months. At that latitude and that time of year, sunrise is in the south, not the east. The blush that rose there was the exact color of Bella's cheeks right now.

"Edward! Pay attention!"

" _**F- !**_"

I have _never_ said that word before.

My foot transfers from the accelerator to the brake barely in time to bring the car back to a speed at which it can just make the turn ahead without careening into the woods. The tires scream against the wet asphalt, and for a moment I truly fear that I will wreck this fine machine. Behind us in the jeep, Emmett lets out an entirely unnecessary war whoop, as we in the Volvo skid on the razor's edge of complete loss of control. Emmett and Rosalie fly past us, Emmett's fist and middle finger raised in an utterly puerile gesture, as I grind to a stop on the shoulder, choking on gouts of venom.

Alice puts her hand on my arm. She has stationed herself in permanent "shotgun" position, every day that we go to school. I should be grateful, but it only makes me even more violently out of sorts.

"It's all right, Edward. You're going to be okay, today."

But I am _not_ "okay." All the while that I had been tracking Bella to avoid her, in fact I had been pushing the car faster and faster towards the school. Faster and faster towards _her_. The mindlessness of it terrifies me.

"Let's don't be late, brother," Jasper murmurs. "One less thing to explain."

I gun the motor, and close my mind to the group by the van. I know where she is. I know the likely route that she will take to her locker and her first class. I don't need to know anything more than that. I will park in the back lot, today; take the side doors in. We will not even pass in the hall.

* * *

Fourth period.

To get to my history class, I must pass right by _that girl's_ locker. Of course she is there as I turn the corner into the corridor. I have been pig-headed today, expending a great deal of ingenuity to elude Rosalie's escort _just this once_, and now I am regretting it desperately.

Her locker is on the bottom row, and so she must crouch to put her books in and take them out. She looks so small there, curled in on herself like a little ball. She stops for a moment, hugging her knees, her head bowed on her crossed forearms.

_What is this? _

I hide behind the stream of other students passing in the hall, keeping pace with them but slower. I don't want to approach too closely. Her blood scent is completely filling not just my nose but my mouth as well, constricting my throat with the most excruciating thirst. I don't want her to see me. The black murder in my eyes burns me through and through with shame. _I don't want her to see. _The moment passes in an instant and she is up and away, hurrying to her next class.

Ashamed or not, the urge to leap upon her is almost insurmountable.

_I returned at midnight, to spend an hour ransacking the administrative office and hacking the school data system for her records. All I found were grade reports and transcripts. She has moved many times. And managed to do very well in her classes. Is that a reason to hug her knees and sigh? The thoughts of her classmates are useless on this score. They know no more about her than I do._

_

* * *

_

Last class of the day.

Of course it has to be Biology. I want so much to skip it. But I cannot be truant for the entire rest of the year, so what is the point of skipping one class?

I wonder whether Bella will have perfect attendance this year.

I am not looking at her, but others are.

Boys.

Bella is not "hot" in the parlance of these children. Yet all of these louts fantasize, to one extent or another, about what might lie beneath her modest attire. A few of them stare at her face; which is rather sweetly formed, if I am honest. It is also seldom seen, since she has an entirely irritating habit of resting her cheek on one hand when she is writing – which causes her hair to fall like a curtain on one side, and hide everything from view.

There! She has done it again! Releasing an invisible cloud that tantalizes my nose and mouth with promises of ecstasy, even as it tortures my every inward part with aching fire. For the luxuriance of human hair is rooted in the blood, and even from across the room, with all the _feng shui_ of fans and windows that I have contrived against it, the air of her still touches my throat, singing faint but true.

I stare out the window: holding my breath, listening to the raindrops as they patter against the pane, counting each one's fall; and wait for eternity to end.


	18. Una Rama Oscura

_**Una Rama Oscura**_

Another day.

Track and avoid.

The bell rings, and I zero in. Jessica Stanley is the one who spends the most time with Bella, and sure enough, it is she who has her arm linked in Bella's as the two of them leave their mathematics class.

"Oh my God! Did you see Edward Cullen staring at you in Biology today?"

_Look at her face!_

But Jessica's eyes are on Mike Newton as he loiters near his locker. Her mind is also filled with irritation. _Just because she's new, Edward has to be interested in her._

And so I have no clue how Bella feels about my hypothetical staring. _I do NOT stare at her. I __**never**__ stare at her._ Bella has said nothing. I am utterly in the dark.

"This is like the fifth time I've caught him doing it this week."

_Caught? Wait a minute!_

The girls are walking to gym class. It is the last period before lunch. Jessica is obsessing about her calorie count for the day, and also impatient with Bella for walking slowly. _I don't see what her problem is. Just because she's no good at gym doesn't mean she has to make us both late. She better appreciate what a good friend I am, walking this slow with her._

Is that why Bella walks slowly? I have observed (always through her classmates' eyes, never my own) that she is indeed quite clumsy at the sports and exercises.

Bumbling. Innocent. Easy to catch.

Bella still hasn't replied to Jessica. The two of them have arrived in the locker room. They _are_ late. Here in Spanish class, Miss Valdez has already got us with our books open. I can hear her thoughts, preparing to call on me for the first translation from our reader. My mind rebels. I have other business to attend to.

"He's crushing on you for sure."

At last, Jessica looks at Bella's face. And Bella looks back – a sidelong glance under tilted brows. What does _that_ mean?

Unable to escape the teacher's command, I read and translate aloud.

_En los bosques, perdido, corté una rama oscura _

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig

_y a los labios, sediento, levanté su susurro:_

and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:

"He hates me," Bella answers.

_era tal vez la voz de la lluvia llorando,_

perhaps it was the voice of the rain crying,

_una campana rota o un corazón cortado. _

a bell overthrown, or a heart cut off.

Of course I gave that impression. What else could she think?

_Algo que desde tan lejos me parecía _

Something from far off it seemed

_oculto gravemente, cubierto por la tierra, _

deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,

Because I _did_ hate her at first. Hated her for nearly ruining me that first day.

_un grito ensordecido por inmensos otoños, _

a shout muffled by immense autumns,

_por la entreabierta y húmeda tiniebla de las hojas. _

by the moist, half-open darkness of the leaves.

Sitting for that endless hour.

_Pero allí, despertando de los sueños del bosque, _

Wakening from the dreaming forest there,

On that wretched stool.

_la rama de avellano cantó bajo mi boca _

the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue,

So close.

_y su errabundo olor trepó por mi criterio _

its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind

Teetering on every tick of the clock,

_como si me buscaran de pronto las raíces _

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind

Poised to _devour_ her -

_que abandoné, la tierra perdida con mi infancia,_

cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood-

_y me detuve herido por el aroma errante._

and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

She can _still_ ruin me. At any moment of any day …

"No way," Jessica insists, snapping my attention back to the present. "Boys don't stare at girls they hate."

They are unburdening themselves of their backpacks, now, preparing to change. Others around them are pulling off their clothes. I stop channeling sight from Jessica's eyes. Her background thoughts – half-formed, comparing her classmates' attributes and her own – are frightening enough.

Again, Bella is silent, and I begin to think I shall have to withdraw entirely from this stolen observation post. I don't belong in the locker room with them. But Jessica is still pursuing Bella, her thoughts swirling and hounding.

"He thinks you're hot." In Jessica's awareness I know that the girls are pulling their shirts off over their heads. Bella's arms are trapped for a moment above her head by her undershirt, as she gazes at herself.

"I'm flat."

Jessica's eyes swoop like a hawk, pulling my sight with them, and I see what I have no right to see.

How can she disparage herself so? She is exquisite. Like a young doe.

_But what am I? _

I am a slayer of young does.

This very morning, just before school.

A yearling. Drinking from a small pool. I flushed her from the water's edge. That is how we hunt. Running the prey on purpose, forcing the heart to beat hard and fast.

I paced her for a while, letting the grace of her bounding form extinguish all thought as it drew me forward, keeping myself in her sight and hearing … until I heard her pulse hit full strength. With a burst of speed I swung wide. She never saw me flank her, never saw me close, to take her from the side. The impact splintered her ribs and scapula, and I broke her neck for mercy, even as my teeth opened the artery below her jaw. Her spinal reflexes fired, causing her limbs to jerk wildly; but it was no purposeful struggle. I contained her easily, as every beat of her dying heart pushed her venison blood into my mouth. Until none was left. And still my teeth bore in, spitting the spent flesh, searching for the last drops, until her head hung by a shred of ligament and skin from the crook of my elbow, and her glossy brown eyes began to film over.

Jessica's thoughts intrude on my mind once more, and I realize I must have missed some part of the conversation. Fortunately Miss Valdez was satisfied with my translation of Neruda, and I am no longer on her radar for the moment.

"Earth to Bella!" The two girls are lining up with their classmates for volleyball, and Jessica is burning with curiosity, even waving her hand in Bella's face.

"What?" Bella asks, and her expression seems confused, or as if she has been wakened from some reverie.

"Would you?"

"Would I what?"

Jessica is exasperated. _I can't stand it when she's like this. What a space cadet._ She repeats her question with exaggerated slowness.

"If Edward Cullen asked you out, would you go with him?"

Jessica is now observing Bella minutely, and I am glad. At last I have a chance to see her reactions clearly. It is a preposterous question, but for some reason, I, too, want to know Bella's answer.

Bella's brow furrows, and I have no idea what she is looking at.

I have been inexcusably rude to her. More than that, I insulted and humiliated her on her first day at school.

"_She stinks!" _

Inexcusable. The only worse thing for her to have heard, would be the _true_ meaning within that lie …

Jessica is waiting with baited breath, yet surely, if Bella has any self respect at all, what answer can she possibly give but ...

"No."

Jessica is stunned. _OMG I can't believe it! _is repeating in her head a mile a minute.

I find that Bella's answer pleases me, though I am not entirely sure why. And yet, I am also not entirely pleased.

Meanwhile, Jessica's mind has filled with new thoughts.

"Oh my God! I'd give my right tit just to see his face when you blow him off." A rash wish by a clueless girl. You are no Penthesilea, Jessica.

But she is already in full scheming mode. "There HAS to be some way we can make this happen."

And on and on. Jessica isn't paying attention to Bella anymore, so, again, I cannot see _any_ of Bella's reactions to all of this. I only know that she has been absolutely silent. I remember where I am barely in time to stifle my growl of utter vexation.

* * *

Gym is over at last. I survived. I'm lingering by the lockers puttering with my stuff. I don't want to go to lunch now. I tell Jessica to go ahead. She seems glad to do so. It's probably a mistake. She's probably already setting out her net of rumors to try to trap Edward into asking me out. Or maybe she just wants to have more time to sit with Mike. That would be nice.

"_If Edward Cullen asked you out, would you go with him?"_

Let's see, he said I stink, he glared at me like he wanted to kill me, he's made a point of sitting at the opposite corner of the room from me … I think he's got a _lot_ of explaining to do before anything like that ever happens. But he's never even said a single word to me, and he's never going to, either. He hates me. I can tell. So what can I possibly say but no?

The truth is, Edward's fine right where he is, sitting way in the back of the class, and speeding out of the room before I can even get my books into my bag. I never have to look at him. Ever. But kids seem to be always dragging him in front of my eyes. All because of that one stupid remark he made, what is it, three weeks ago now? Come on. Why can't they just let the dead sleep?

"_He thinks you're hot!"_

Give me a break. I can still be called stick-girl.

"_Some guys like it like that."_

Boys who like boys, maybe …

I can imagine Edward loving a boy. Or being loved by a boy. He is so beautiful. I wouldn't think it was wrong. But everyone here talks about that as if it's disgusting. 'Queer-bait', 'faggot', 'homo erectus' – the boys think they're so funny calling him names like this. Not to his face, of course, never that. But if I could overhear it, probably he has, too.

He wouldn't let himself get maneuvered into asking me out just to make people stop taunting and hating him, would he?

The whole idea of that makes me feel sad.

He's never going to ask me out, but if he did, and if _that_ were the reason, what should I say?

Yes?

Or no?

Wouldn't it be horrible for him either way?

Maybe he blew Jessica off some time or another, too, and now is her chance to get back at him.

Through me.

…

Through _me_.

My feet are taking me past the cafeteria, and out the doors to the parking lot. My chest hurts and I can't eat. It's drizzling again, and I don't even care.

I want to go home, but I don't know where home is. Across the parking lot, the forest looms, silent and dark and deep.

* * *

_A/N:_

_The poem that Edward was translating in Spanish class is Soneto VI, "En los bosques, perdido, corte una rama oscura" (Sonnet Number VI, "Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig"), by Pablo Neruda. A very nice sampling of his poetry, in both the original Spanish and English translation, can be found here:_

_http:(double slash)www(dot)adowns(dot)com/PabloNeruda(dot)html#VI_

_along with a picture of the poet as a young man. La rama de avellano – the hazel sprig – is what dousers use to find water hidden under ground …_

_Penthesilea was an Amazon queen. The Amazons, a tribe of woman warriors in ancient Greece, were said to have the custom of cutting off the right breast so that they could fire a bow unhindered by their femininity. As a young woman, Penthesilea accidentally killed a fellow queen and had to perform penance for this act. Edward, having grown up in a time when Greek and Latin and the Classical literature were part of standard high school curriculum for educated young men, would be familiar with these references, and hence when Jessica said she would 'give her right tit' would naturally connect to the Amazons. A brief synopsis of Penthesilea's story and its significance in Classical literature may be found here:_

_http:(double slash)www(dot)stanford(dot)edu/~plomio/penthesilea(dot)html_


	19. Among the Sacred Standing Ones

_**Among The Sacred Standing Ones**_

_A female flower detaches herself from the group that swirls upon the asphalt clearing, in front of the baked-mud caves._

_Like a down-borne seed of milkweed on the air, she approaches, and enters our space. Behind her, a male flower follows. She does not know._

_This female flower is of the plentiful sort, the ones who carry the heat of the sun in their cores, who make war upon us from sea to sea. The male who follows is different. He is of the rare species, the moon flowers, who are as cold as our own bodies are at night._

_She wanders among us, this sun lodge daughter, treading gently over the litter of our needles and the smaller plants below, brushing our branches with her own, searching. The moon's catkin follows, hiding himself from her._

_A young fir stands before her, and she stops. Compared to ours, her tropism is like lightning, reaching forward, touching the moss and lichens that grow on the bark. She approaches closer, and her upper limbs twine like bittersweet around the young fir's trunk, until her own cleaves tight. Almost equal in girth she is, to this brother. Tides of air move within her, move her against the tree._

_Time passes, and she sheds the husks from her feet, to stand – naked, tender and warm – on the cold, black roots. Tightly, tightly, she cleaves, making no sound, watering the bark and moss with drops from the ageless sea. The clouds answer, and the great loneliness of the unrooted drifts among us, like the white mist of morning._

_The moon flower hides, still, behind a ledge of rock. All of his senses are pinned upon the sun blossom. He has folded himself close to the ground, become a bud again, compact and hard and unborn, motionless as the stone that conceals him. But his soul flies forward, into the standing fir. Now its branches bow in shelter. Needles knit themselves against the falling rain._

_Her flower face turns upward, seeking the sky through the branches, high beyond the young tree's crown. Twined upon the upright trunk, she presses the petals of her mouth to her brother's bark. And all of our heartwood shivers with longing._

_

* * *

_

* * *

_A/N: __Tropism: a term in botany that refers to movement by plants toward an external stimulus. Plants generally move by growing in the direction of the favorable stimulus such as light. The trees are perceiving/describing Bella (and Edward, who has followed her into the forest) in terms of their own nature._


	20. In Grandmother's House

**In Grandmother's House**

God!

I am awake, and shivering, even wrapped in both quilts. But not quite back in my room. The new nightlight shows the shapes of the furniture dimly, with a faintly golden hue.

A forest filled with snow. That is where I was. I recognize it all. I have dreamed about the picture in the book in my grandmother's house. I don't remember what the book was about any more. Just that it was big, and heavy, one of those art type books with lots of pictures, that people put on their coffee tables.

There on the page. It was a photograph of a forest filled with snow. A deer, running, bounding through the chest-high drifts. A mountain lion had just leapt onto the deer's back. Somehow the camera had caught that single moment when the lion landed, and grabbed on. Front paws splayed wide, claws just gripping the deer's shoulders, hind paws also, clamping on, jaws just closing on the slender neck. How long had I stared at that picture as a child? Imprinted it on my mind? No wonder I dreamed of it with such crystal clarity.

I dreamed I was the deer. And even now I can feel the ghost of the mountain lion's weight on my back. So heavy. So real. Even the winter fur, so deep and thick.

In cartoons or drawings, or the staged attacks in television or movies, the predator is always shown with ears back and eyes glaring, teeth bared in a savage snarl. But this photograph, caught unawares, not staged by man, showed something so different. The cat's ears are forward. The face is reposed, even though the jaws are wide, to bite. The eyes gaze deeply. The pounce … is an embrace. The deer also, shows no whites of the eyes, only single intent. One point. To run. Just as the deer is the one point for the lion.

We always think of them as enemies. But the camera shows that they are not. They are lovers. Ready to become one flesh. And if one may die so that the other may live, is that not the greatest love of all?

I huddle under my quilts, pull them around me, to feel the mountain lion still on my back. But it was just a dream. And now chills are running up and down my spine. I put my hand to my forehead. It's hot. I have a killer headache and the back of my neck feels stiff. Soon I will have a running nose. And sore throat, and everything. This is what I got from walking into the forest yesterday, in the rain.

I don't even know what time it is; only that it is before any daybreak. I stagger out of bed with the quilts still around me. There has to be some Tylenol or something in the bathroom.

* * *

I'm still rifling through the mirror cabinet when my Dad comes to the door, with squinting eyes and bed head. I wish I hadn't made enough noise to wake him up.

"What're you doin' up, Bells?" he asks.

"I was looking for some Tylenol."

In an instant, the back of his hand is against my forehead. "Damn." The way he says it, the word becomes two syllables. "Hold the phone." After a bit of ransacking, he comes up with an old mercury thermometer. He's probably never used it since the last time I was here. For all I know it may be the very same one that Grandma used for him when he was a kid. I try to imagine him with smooth, boy skin, and no moustache. I can't. He sits me down on the closed toilet seat, and pops the thermometer into my mouth. "Stay right here."

"Yes, Mom."

_Jesus Christ, why did I say that?_ But my Dad's back is already retreating down the stairs, his footsteps heavy and clumping, except for the fourth step from the bottom, which creaks right on cue.

In the end he does find some Tylenol, sheepishly telling me that it was in his tackle box. I bet a _lot_ of weird stuff ends up in there. I have a temperature of 102, and so I have to stay home. No amount of whining about tests and homework will budge him. He's going to send his deputy around to the school to pick up any make-up work I'll need, and bring me some Nyquil, vitamins, and chicken soup. There's nothing I can do about this because it's a Friday, and Dad knows as well as I do that I'll be able to catch myself up and then some over the weekend. He stays as long as he can, and leaves a tray of hot tea and Pop Tarts at my bedside.

* * *

I don't know when I fell asleep. Some time between my Dad leaving and it getting light out. I wake up to more chills and fever, and now, sweaty sheets. The tea and Pop Tarts are still on the bedside table. I thought for sure I'd eaten them, but I guess I'd fallen asleep instead. There's grey daylight coming in through the window, and my alarm clock says 10:37.

The next hour is just wrestling. Wrestling out of my clammy pj's, through a not-quite-hot-enough shower, and into something dry; wrestling my sheets and pillowcase off the bed; wrestling the whole messy bundle down the stairs and into the washing machine. Luckily all of that is just off the kitchen. The house has no basement, just a crawlspace. But the staircase is too narrow, and I'm all clumsy in my sweats and poufy parka, and the whole struggle with linens and machines and laundry products leaves me shivering and light-headed. I should have eaten something first. Well, I guess I'll eat something now.

I wait for the water to boil, and wonder if Deputy Dave (yes, that really is his name, poor guy) has come by yet. If he couldn't raise me by ringing the doorbell, he could well have left the stuff on the porch. I'm hoping so, since leftovers from the diner aren't looking too appetizing right now, and the Pop Tarts are too dry and too sweet.

I've got one quilt over me, just for good measure, and I open the door a crack to peek out. Sure enough, there's a brown paper bag right in the middle of the porch. Smiling to myself about deputies and drug drops, I tiptoe out to pick it up … and nearly hit myself in the face with it. The bag is way lighter than my muscles had expected; way lighter than it has any right to be.

I crouch down there on the porch to open the bag. It has two parcels inside, wrapped up in what looks like butcher paper, but not quite as slick. I pull one out. It's very light, and a little rustly inside when I shake it. It smells like my Mom's spice rack at Christmas. The drizzly wind moves between the porch posts, and sends a swirling chill straight down my back. There is no sign or sound anywhere of a person or car or anything, no clue to who may have left this, or even when. But I can't stay out here catching my death a second time, so I bring the bag and its parcels inside.

The water is whistling on the stove already, so I have to detour to turn it off before pulling the parcels gingerly out of the paper bag and onto the kitchen nook table. Something is left at the bottom of the bag. I pull it out. It's paper, tightly folded, a little larger than a silver dollar, but octagonal. I don't notice anything else about it because I have recognized what is _on_ it. Handwriting. Precise. Rhythmical. Beautiful. Edward's handwriting. Yes, I know his handwriting. Sitting in the front corner of the class, I'm the one who collects all the papers when they get passed forward to turn in.

And who else writes in a hand that looks like the penmanship primers from that 1901 schoolhouse our class visited, back in third grade?

My vision goes a little bit black, and my fingers go a little bit numb, and the folded paper with Edward's handwriting on it drops to the table. It's been too many hours since dinner last night. I _really_ should eat something first.

But instead I sit down and pick up the paper and start to pry it open. It's folded like a spiral, or a rose, with the corner of each petal tucked under the one right next to it. This kind of intricate folding work needs slender fingers. Like a girl's. Or like Edward's. Not that I actually ever _saw_ his fingers. They were hidden in tightly clenched fists. But from the finely wrought contours of his knuckles and wrists, I could infer. Edward Beaux-mains.

I can't help imagining Edward's fingers touching the paper, creasing and coaxing it into this spiral-flower-coin shape. Opening it petal by petal, my fingers are touching the same paper. I feel as if my fingertips and his are brushing each other.

_Oh stop it! Just __**stop**__. _

_Nobody thinks that way. Nobody feels that way. You're the only weirdo._

The fever from the cold sends its heat up my face again. I have the paper completely open now. Managed it without ripping anything. It's nice paper, not too heavy, not too flimsy, a soft cream color. Perfect for writing on. With a fountain pen, no less. He likes beautiful things. Old fashioned things. So do I.

I read what is written.

_Cinnamon Twig Decoction_

_Ramulus cinnamomi cassiae_

_Radix paeoniae_

_Rhizoma zingiberis officinalis recens_

_Fructus ziziphi jujubae_

_Radix glycirrhyzae uralensis (mellis praeparata)_

Latin. And beautiful handwriting. I'm a little bit hypnotized.

_For fever and chills that are unrelieved by sweating, accompanied by headache, aversion to wind, stiff neck, nasal congestion, dry heaves, no particular thirst. Thin, white, moist tongue coating. Floating pulse that is either moderate or frail. Condition contracted after exposure to wind and cold. May also be used for similar presentation in convalescent and post-partum patients._

I have no clue about pulses, but I have to fight off an impulse to run upstairs and see if my tongue has a thin, white, moist coating. The rest of the symptoms fit me to a 't'. Exposure to wind and cold. Did he see me, then, coming back after lunch period, cold and bedraggled as a drowned rat? He was _noticing_ me? ….. ?

_Foundation formula from the Shang Han Lun, ("Treatise on Cold Injury"), by Han Dynasty physician, Zhang Zhong-jing._

Chinese medicine? He knows Chinese medicine? Or is Doctor Cullen a closet herbalist? I pick up one of the paper parcels. Where would he even _get_ this stuff? There's no Chinese pharmacy in Forks, that's for sure. I doubt there is even one in Port Angeles. He'd have had to go all the way to Seattle and back. In one night. Unless his Dad has some kind of a stash at home.

None of this makes sense, and it's time to get back to reality.

"_She stinks!"_

Murderous black eyes that made my hair stand up.

So 'allergic' to me that he has to sit in the farthest possible corner away.

I turn the paper over, and sure enough, there are directions for how to prepare the 'decoction'.

_It's a trap!_

For all I know this stuff will give me a horrible, _long lasting_ rash; or the runs; or make my hair fall out. I've seen bright, mean boys do stuff like that before, though I have to admit, Edward has pretty much outdone _everyone_, here, with such beautiful and elaborate lures.

_Dammit!_

I take everything upstairs to my room and Google the bejeezus out of it.

* * *

Almost two o'clock. I _still_ haven't eaten. My tongue _does_ have a thin, white, moist coating on it. And unless he's sprayed the herbs with anthrax or something, Edward's care package is legit. We don't have any rice to make gruel with, so I'll have to prepare it the modern way, just straight. (Yes, he'd very thoughtfully copied both preparation methods down for me.)

Forty minutes later I'm at the kitchen table, sipping the densely spicy 'tea', and nibbling on a bit of microwaved mashed potatoes and pork chop. Already I can feel my insides getting warm.

* * *

The telephone rings in the dark, downstairs. I must have slept again. I've sweated again, too, but I think I feel better. I stumble downstairs to the phone, with the quilt still around me.

"Hello?"

"Bells."

His voice sounds tired. "Hey, Dad."

"How you feeling?"

"Better, I think."

"Dave come by with the stuff?"

"Yeah, I got it all. Thanks, Dad."

"Listen, I'm gonna be a little late. You go ahead and eat. I'll get something at Bessie's on the way back."

He's really not used to having someone in the house with him. But now that I'm here, I don't want him to live like a nomad. Even if I _have_ taken every trace of Edward's care package and hidden it up in my room.

"It's ok, Dad. I was saving some of the soup for you."

There's a long silence at the other end. I wish I could see. Is he happy? Sad? Angry?

"I'll be home as soon as I can."

* * *

I'm upstairs with Trigonometry when my Dad makes it back. I hope he doesn't ask me about the weird smell in the kitchen. I suppose I can say it's herbal tea, but I'd rather not lie. Even though Dad seems to like Dr. Cullen, I don't think he's quite ready for me to be drinking Chinese medicine left on our porch by his adoptive son.

Dinner is the usual quiet affair. I figure it's my turn to try to make conversation, so I ask.

"How was work?"

My Dad looks up and cracks a smile.

"Busy."

Maybe he sees my look of disbelief. How much crime can there be in a small town like Forks?

"Some fool snowboarder's gone missing out at Wolf Creek. Got the whole ski patrol and rangers searchin' the mountain, tonight. Fred's up there with the dogs right now."

Lost in the snow and the cold and the dark. I can't help shivering at the thought.

"They'll find him though, right?"

"Her. It's a girl." And I see on my Dad's face that he is so very glad right now that his daughter is too clumsy to stay upright on anything that moves. I don't press him further, and the conversation dies a natural death.

As soon as the meal ends, Dad shoos me upstairs. I'm glad enough to go.

* * *

Edward's paper 'coin' is on my desk, next to my homework. I've refolded it, then opened it up, then put it back together again about a hundred times already. I know how the folds go, now. It's intricate. Like a puzzle. I should finish my Trig homework at least, before turning in. But instead I'm just playing with the paper. I open it one more time. I love looking at Edward's handwriting.

I can't figure him out. He's like the paper. Folded in complicated ways. He was so mean to me on first sight. So what is this now with bringing medicine to my door? Is he trying to apologize? I read the last line that he wrote, underneath all the instructions.

_In the future, try not to get yourself soaked and chilled on the same day that you decide to skip lunch._

Hardly a grand apology. But showing is stronger than telling. Actions speak louder than words. (_Don't they?)_ He saw me leave – or at least noticed that I wasn't at lunch. And he must have seen me come back all rained-on and blue-lipped. He brought me medicine; maybe drove all night to get it and bring it back. And he gave me all the information I would need to judge for myself if his gift was sincere. Or useful. More than that, I have the recipe, now, in case I ever need it again, or in case anyone else does. And instead of the grand apology, he gives me instructions to keep me safe – at least from the common cold. Actions speak stronger than words.

But not without poetry.

The cinnamon twig … is an olive branch.

...

The paper with Edward's handwriting on it comes with me to bed. And sleeps under my pillow.

* * *

_A/N: "Edward Beaux-mains" : Beaux mains is French, and means 'beautiful hands'._

_The Decoction:_

_Ramulus cinnamomi cassiae ~ Twig of Cassia Cinnamon_

_Radix paeoniae ~ Root of Paeony_

_Rhizoma zingiberis officinalis recens ~ Tuber of fresh Ginger_

_Fructus ziziphi jujubae ~ Fruit of Jujube (date)_

_Radix glycirrhyzae uralensis (mellis praeparata) ~ Root of Licorice (fried in honey)_

_... The formula, its source, preparation and use are all authentic, folks. You can Google it._


	21. The Monster in the Closet

_All of the ownership disclaimers apply, of course, to this and all chapters._

_Undead gratitude to the midwives of this story: averysubtlegift and geo3._

_I suppose I should stop being embarrassed to admit how much readers' reviews mean to me. You guys are the bomb. Thank you!_

_

* * *

_

**The Monster in the Closet**

Rosalie does not accost me until I have nearly reached the aspen grove at the far edge of our lawn.

"Where are you going, Edward?"

"Hunting."

"Horseshit."

I hate this; utterly hate it. Our entire conversation is clearly audible to every person back in the house. I'm surprised they haven't all trooped out together to bully me. But no, all of them are inside, still as statues. Esme and Carlisle are in the large leather wing chair in his study. She reclines in his embrace, with Proust's _À la recherche du temps perdu_ in her hand, although she is not reading it. Carlisle's mind is reciting the Lord's Prayer. _Does he think that will keep me from trespass? _ Jasper and Emmett are in the great room, with the old, three-dimensional chess set on the coffee table between them. Alice sits on the floor between Jasper's knees. Even from this distance I can feel the solace that he is tenderly offering her. No one is moving, or breathing; only listening. As if I were some kind of a time bomb.

Here, under the sky, the wet air hints of snow.

"Then why even ask, Rosalie?" I retort. _Why even ask?_

"Because we're _family_, Edward. We look out for one another." _Even when some of us hardly deserve it._

Rosalie has but one memory of her human life – an act of unspeakable violence. Her human family were utter strangers to her when she visited them afterwards – first via newspaper clippings, and later, much later, from concealment and a safe distance. She knew in the abstract that she had been bound to the somber woman in black, her white-headed husband, and two gangling boys: by ties of consanguinity, and eighteen years of shared life. But she remembered none of it. Even now, as she says the word "family", that moment in the trees with Carlisle and Esme returns, like a picture post card of bewilderment, frustration, and grief.

I should feel sorry for her. I _do_ feel sorry for her. Just as I have done every other time that tableau has claimed her mind. But, more than anything, I chafe, now, to LEAVE. Even though I know that I should stay. It doesn't matter. NOTHING matters to me now, except for Bella and her blood. And so, I am insolent, and insufferable.

"Does this mean you're coming with me, Rose?"

"Don't be an ass."

"What, then?"

"Stop being so damn _selfish_. Nobody's going to crucify you for taking her, just be _smart_ about it. Abducting her from her room at night? Really, Edward."

But that's _not _what I was going there to do …

"You've held off this long; give her until Monday and she can drive off the road on her way home from school. That old truck of hers has a _huge_ gas tank. Just be _smart_ for Christ's sake! I'd _help_ you."

The last is added softly, so softly that it can barely be heard over Alice's sharp gasp and silent wail of _NO! No, no, no, no, no! _… and the phantom roar of Bella's truck, engulfed in white hot flames, her emptied corpse blackening inside.

If I could run out of my skin, I would. Instead, I run down the mountain, toward the town. No one can catch me. It's useless to try.

If I had not, at least in _some_ part of my wretched mind, _considered_ Rosalie's offer, Alice's vision would never have sprung forth. _But it wasn't my idea!_ If it weren't for them all distrusting me, worrying for me, suggesting their damn solutions …

I'm running too fast. I force myself to circle back in a great arc through the pitch-black woods. I need time to run it out, to calm myself with the jet stream of air on my skin and the tireless play of my limbs.

Angela was with her. I like spying through Angela. She looks at Bella's face. And so I had a full view of the sneeze – her eyes squeezing shut, her arm coming up to try to muffle it all in the crook of her elbow. The little sniffle that followed. And for the first time, the very first time, my own mind echoed the warning that Alice has been sounding all these weeks. _"Not her!"_ But the year is 2007, not 1918. There is no little Spanish bird flying in at people's windows, stealing their lives away. Rosalie is right. I _am_ being an ass.

My circle has looped back upon itself, and once again I am coursing like an arrow towards the police chief's house.

A mile from my goal, I catch the waft of cinnamon. I am not searching for the scent. Vampire senses are very keen. I slow my pace, to flit through the dark like a specter, and soon, the glimmer of her nightlight is visible through the trees. Far from keeping monsters at bay, that frail golden beam is the very beacon that guides me in.

In a trice, I have scaled the tree outside her bedroom window, and cling to its trunk at a level with the transparent panes. Where God should have placed an angel with a flaming sword, there is only a pair of flimsy curtains with fading flower print.

I can smell her, and I can hear her, but I cannot see her. She is burrowed under the two threadbare quilts, completely hidden except for a few stray locks of brown hair, falling across the pillow.

What is wrong with her father? Doesn't he know that his daughter needs good, thick, feather comforters to keep her warm? Preferably several of them, just to be sure. She came here from a hot and sunny place.

I hang like a moth against the glass.

_What am I __**doing**__?_

…

I have told myself that I am making amends. For insulting her so needlessly. For acting so ungentlemanly toward her.

For being this creature that I am.

But now, with this medicine that she has taken, we are quits, she and I. I have paid the debt that I made. Once she regains her health – which surely she will – there will be no further need for me to come to her window.

…

…

Even _I_ know what a lie that is.

The path to this place has been blazed. It has become, in just two short nights, a path of least resistance. I know that I will endanger her again … and again, and again, and again.

_Why didn't Alice stop me?_

…

…

The night wind runs chill, stirring the trees. Beside me, a spray of branch tips scrapes at the casement.

I am fairly certain that Bella's fever has broken, and she has 'turned the corner'. Her heart rhythm is even and slow, as it should be in sleep: steady, and stronger than it had been last night.

Enough. There's no need to do more.

_Time for me to leave._

The aromas of cinnamon, ginger, licorice and peony root are strongest here. Has she stored the herbs in her room? Even without breathing, I can taste her blood and her flesh as well – all the sweetly mingled scents – seeping delicately out through the window seams.

_Go. Don't stay. Not here._

_Go!_

Levering the window open with barely a sound, I cross the threshold, and go into her room.

_Stop._

_Stop!_

I stop at the head of her bed. I can see her better, now. Her body is curled into a "C", the top of her head and one cheek just showing above the bedclothes that wrap her. Her hair is dry. Her breathing is even and unimpeded. Her eyelids do not even flutter.

My hand hovers over her barely exposed face. Less than an inch of air separates my skin from hers.

She has no fever. None at all.

I cannot move.

I have never been this close to her since that horrible day in Biology class. But this is a thousand times worse. The air in her room is saturated with her. She surrounds me, seeps into my every pore. I wonder if I am going to die, right here and right now. Burned at the stake. Even as I drink down every red, living drop of her.

A creak on the stair startles me.

How had I not taken her father into account? His muttered thoughts precede him, guilty at having spent the evening drinking beer and watching television in the dark, while his daughter sleeps upstairs.

He ascends with a heavy tread to the second floor, and steps into the bathroom.

Already I have disappeared into Bella's closet. My stupidest idea yet. She does not have many clothes, but they hang on either side of me. _Touching me_. It is all I can do not to bite her clothing, shred and swallow it for her scent.

The loud, rank stream of her father urinating into the toilet bowl is a sharp, if utterly mortifying, salvation. I focus on the smell and the sound, and his thoughts, wishing once more that I could crawl out of my skin. But it is better than skinning his daughter alive. Or eating all the clothes in her closet.

His thoughts are muddy, half-formed.

_Horse piss in, horse piss out._

The toilet paper roll spins briefly, every sound magnified by the way I have pinned my attention _there_, rather than _here_.

_When Billy's over, alright. But no more of this drinkin' during the week stuff. Not while Bella's here. Not while she's here._

The man sighs heavily, and I slump against the back of Bella's closet, sink to a pathetic huddle between her suitcases on the floor. The movement is not silent, and I freeze in panic. If I had a heart that could move, it would be racing, now, as I strain every sense to find out if her father has heard me.

His thoughts remain unfocused, but his step is leaving the bathroom, and approaching the bedroom door. Wedged between Bella's up-ended suitcases, I am half-hidden by her hanging clothes. But I don't feel safe at all. If he should open the closet, what will I do?

Kill them both?

I don't want to. I don't want to.

I smell old sweat, beer, leather, and gun oil. Good God, is he wearing his sidearm? Here in the house?

Chief Swan steps into his daughter's room.

My eyes are squeezed shut. As if that would keep him from discovering me! I watch through his eyes. I had forgotten how dim human vision is. The room is dark for him – even with the nightlight – and everything is washed down to greys and blacks.

Swan stands near the foot of his daughter's bed. He is gazing at her. I hear him forming the thought to pull the covers closer around her, but she is already wrapped _snug as a little bug in there_. That's because she's still cold. She will need to drink more of the medicine. I hope she follows the directions I wrote for her.

An image overtakes the Chief's mind. A smiling woman, pretty, and very young, with golden brown hair caught loosely in a cotton kerchief. She is wearing a red and black check flannel shirt that comes almost to her knees, and stands bare-legged and barefoot, with a dark-haired toddler on her hip. Behind her is a dim kitchen, with drop-cloths and buckets on the floor, and bright, newly painted cabinets.

The wispy-haired little girl looks up and smiles gaily. "Mommy's painting! And I _helped_!" She holds out her hands, both palms slick and damp, the color of canary feathers. There are smudges of the same color on her clothing, and on her mother's face as well. The cabinets glow like sunshine.

The woman laughs, in a voice very much like the child's, "If you'll do rubber duck duty, I'll get cleaned up down here."

And then I feel, _I _feel, the warm little body clamped around my midsection, the soft, sweet-smelling child hair under my nose. "I'm a _big_ girl now! I helped Mommy!"

My eyes fly open, and I find that my fist is in my teeth. Her scent, God, her scent! Swan has moved to the head of his daughter's bed. He does what I never can: brushing the hair from her face with his hand. I see her as he does, a dim form in a darkened room, and a flash of a very small yellow handprint on a curling edge of linoleum downstairs.

_Where did the years go? _

The stinging in my eyes, the ache under my ribs, these are _his_, not mine. I have no right to them, none at all. Just as I will never smell of sweat, or piss … or beer, for that matter. Never need to shave. And still I gather it all to myself, like a wound.

The man sighs heavily again, and leaves the room as quietly as he can.

I need stillness, and strangely, this house provides it. The Chief's thoughts as he puts himself to bed are blunted and blurred, easy to block out. Bella's mind is, of course, as silent as the night. I remain in the closet, in a kind of stasis, my arms around my knees, head bowed against my forearms, so that I have a cage of my own flesh and scent around my face. It helps, a little. Enough that I can remain, unthinking, in the dark, quiet space.

When Chief Swan is also asleep, I leave. I can't go home yet. I run aimlessly through the national forest. Something has become lodged in my throat. A knot of pine. A peach pit. A fish bone: that can neither be swallowed down nor retched back up.

* * *

_A/N: Well, I confess that now I am officially quaking in my boots. I'm running out of already written chapters! I had hoped to maintain a bit of a buffer, so that I could continue to update on a fairly predictable schedule. (I'm a reader, too, I know how crazy-making it is to have long hiatus between chapters.) But it looks like best laid plans are not going to work. There are two more chapters pretty much in final draft form, and then, dang, I'll be laying down track right in front of the train as I go. I can promise a few things:_

_(1) The entire story is fully outlined in my head and on paper. I can see and feel practically every scene in my head. But it is somewhat shifting and mutable, as if seen through water, and so the actual WRITING remains to be done_

_(2) I am working on this story in pretty much all of my unallocated waking and sleeping hours. (My family thinks I am batshit crazy.) I think I would even be working on it when I am dead. No matter how long it may be between chapters, I will not abandon it._

_So, if you are enjoying the story, please bear with me. And if anyone has any magic potions for unblocking the channel from visions to words, please send some over! (I'll be checking my front stoop for brown paper bags ... )_

Thanks!


	22. Dumb Barter

**Dumb Barter**

It's too ornate. And I spent way too much time on it. I guess I got … a little bit carried away. I was supposed to be finishing my history paper, which was due on Monday. That _did_ get done, but … later. So I looked like a raccoon on my first day back at school, and the … thing … has now been burning a hole through my training bra for three whole days.

All because I have no stones. I am _not_ afraid of Edward Cullen. But, me, walking up to him and saying, "Edward, thank you for the medicine – it really helped," … … when elephants fly. Maybe.

So, instead, I am stalking him. Or rather, I am stalking his absence – the golden, opportune moment when he is nowhere near his locker. And no one _else_ is anywhere within eyeshot of it either.

It's Wednesday already. If that moment is not now, it is never. I have finally resorted to excusing myself from class to go to the bathroom. The hallway is empty. The 'thing' is leaving my fingers and passing through one of the vent slots in Edward Cullen's locker. I am such a dork. And now, Edward will know it, too.

* * *

The last bell has rung, and Jasper is accompanying me as I make my way through the hallways. Subjecting him to my constant craving for Bella's blood while we are caught in this press of heated young bodies rushing about – even _running_ – in front of us, seems dangerous to me. I wonder that Alice allows it. Both of us are gritting our teeth, and, through the humans' eyes, I see that we look positively menacing. Not entirely unconsciously, they avert their gazes, and part before us like Moses' Red Sea.

I try to change the subject.

"She talks in her sleep."

The wave of Jasper's shock hits me hard before he can temper it with lethargy. Serenity is beyond us both today. It is all he can do to dissipate the under-current of anger that he feels at my confessed activities.

_This has got to stop, _he thinks_. Boy's a loose cannon!_

All the ways that everything could go to hell in an instant start running through Jasper's mind, and he leaves them all un-edited for my benefit.

Aloud, he asks mildly, "What does she say?"

"I don't know. She mumbles."

He can't help laughing at this – a short, staccato sputter through his nose; which could be quite disgusting if we were human; but in this moment is the most welcome relief. We both cling to it for a pace or two, just to cleanse ourselves of our dire thoughts.

"Sometimes she calls for her mother," I add.

_And sometimes for her father, too, even though he is in the very same house with her. _Her sleeping voice is soft, even to my hearing. Once, I smelled tears.

"I have no idea what is in her mind. It's driving me to distraction."

I hear reinforcements on the way. Alice and Rosalie and Emmett are converging on my and Jasper's destination.

"Edward, what's in her mind makes no matter to us. Except if she should start to _suspect_ anything about you …"

I never speak to her. What could she possibly suspect about me, except that I am a 'dumb-ass'? Or possibly a queer-ass. The thought gives me a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Jasper snaps me back to the present. "What are you going to do if one of these nights she _wakes up_, Edward?"

"_SHIT!_" The expletive leaves both our mouths at the same time. Bella's _scent_!

"Is she there?" Jasper hisses.

I cast forward, through the eyes of the rapidly thinning groups of teenagers in the hallway.

_Nothing._

The rest of us have smelt her, too. I open my mind as widely as I can.

"I can't find her." We are quickspeaking, undetectable to human senses. "She's not anywhere."

We all meet at my locker, and Emmett is practically dancing with ill-contained laughter. He runs his nose down the seam of my locker door. What would he do if it were on the bottom row, I wonder?

"Oh, Ed-boy!" he laughs. "She done went and _marked_ your _locker_!"

Of all the preposterous …

But Emmett is already running a full-color video in his mind of a female mountain lion rubbing her side sinuously up against my locker. He is wrong. _I_ am the lion. All of my senses flood with memory of doe after doe in my arms. My kills are efficient. Their struggles are all too brief. No good can come of this train of thought. I don't want the deer. I want _Bella._

"Emmett!" Jasper explodes, "For the love of God!"

We ask too much of Jasper. My sudden savage thirst has overwhelmed him, crashing his barriers, washing wholesale back through all of us.

"Hey, I can't help it if he keeps takin' it all the wrong way!"

For a sickening few seconds, with her scent in our nostrils, we ALL want nothing more than to find Bella and drink her dry. Five vampires gulp hard, as Jasper blankets himself and us with the only thing he can reach at this moment – the deep well of wounds that he carries with him from his years in the South. It is not the least bit pleasant.

More than any of the others, I am acutely aware that beneath the pain and grief that Jasper is projecting, other things lurk as well. Doubt has haunted him since that first walk across the parking lot into the school on my return. But now it has congealed into fear. Jasper is _afraid_. What if he can't do this? What if my lust for Bella's blood truly overpowers him one day, and through him, all of us? _Collateral damage_.

He has agonized about Alice, and her dogged persistence in 'facilitating' my dance with the dreadful temptation before me. _An accident waiting to happen … Like watching a train wreck in slow motion … _has run through his mind almost constantly as he has stood guard over me, from near or far. Still, he _wants_ to do what Alice asks of him, even against all his better judgment. He had done such fell deeds before, for so long, for one whom he did not even love. His wish and need to do good at Alice's bidding blazes and pierces, too deeply to be hidden, whether from himself or any other.

And he has _felt_ things from her. Alice loves Bella. _Loves_ her. How can this be possible? They don't even know each other.

Yet.

And yet, Alice loves Bella _now_. Because in a vision she has experienced that she _will_. Although there must be an infinity of world lines in which that never comes to pass, there must also be _one_ in which it does. And so he willingly suffers, in order to vouchsafe that misty future for her.

How can I stay? Just as I had in '27, I should leave. I would not wish my lust and frustration on any one. But it has fallen onto Jasper. And our family is so much larger now, than it had been back then. _There is so much more to lose. _No good can come of this. Perhaps if I leave, Bella will live long enough for Alice and she to become friends. Even if it can only last for a brief moment in time.

"Don't you DARE!" Alice cries. A new future has risen in her mind. I see that if I leave now, I will likely never return. The paths spiraling and branching outward behind her eyes are very dark, fraying into violence and blood with every step that I take.

"Come on," she says to the others. "Edward needs some alone time with his locker."

Alice herds our little flock of vampires away toward the doors, and the parking lot outside. All except for me.

They bicker like six-year-olds as they go. All because of me.

"This is getting completely out of hand, Alice."

"I'm telling Carlisle."

_I sure hope Alice knows what she's doing …_

As they pile into Emmett's jeep and Rosalie's BMW, I suddenly realize why Alice had suggested, out of the blue this morning, that Rose might want to drive it today, "just to run the engine a bit." She must have had a vision of our little convocation here, with Bella's scent wafting out at me from inside my locker (surely they _all_ had smelled that THAT was where the scent was coming from, _not_ the surface of the door … ) And in her vision I suppose I had needed 'alone time', to presumably drive home on my own afterward. She had seen all of this, and perhaps more beside, yet been able to hide it from me. All day. Even now.

For a moment, I hate her. Instantly, Jasper's protective emotion flares out at me.

_Don't you __**dare**__ even THINK of hating her, boy! She walks the line for you!_

The utter freakishness of our family, and these silent exchanges across distance, hammers me suddenly. We are the X-men among vampires.

I have been standing stock still beside my locker, and now I slump against it, and slide down to sit on the floor, my head in my hands. It is an uncharacteristically human posture, and catches the attention of a passing student.

_Whoa, a Cullen not being perfect!_

The boy smirks to himself.

_The ol' gaydar is beeping again! Bip bip bip, beeep beeep beeep, bip bip bip … _

He doesn't recognize the cadence – S.O.S. The message his subconscious is sending is not what he thinks.

I don't care. I have been noticed, which is never good. It's time for me to find out what the hell is in my locker, and then leave. I promise myself that I will do a border check on my way home – something that I have been neglecting of late, much to Rosalie's ire.

"_You have DUTIES Edward. We all do."_

"_The Quileutes – "_

"_Are NOT our ALLIES. They only patrol their own land. They couldn't care less what happens to us."_

I stand and face my locker door. I know it's not Bella in there. There is no heartbeat. And yet, here is her scent, quite literally stalking me. Ensconcing itself in my personal space. I wonder if, like the fisherman with his shadow, she has somehow severed her scent from herself – with dancing and incantations and a silver sickle knife at the dark of the moon – to set it abroad to walk on its own. And now it hides in wait for me, among my books and papers and scribbled music.

There is nothing for it but to open the door.

_Nothing._

I rifle through my belongings, letting my nose guide my hand.

_There._

Slid down and wedged in the front corner.

A folded paper coin.

Jessica's machinations flash through my mind. Ever since last Thursday, she has indeed been industriously dropping little comments here and there among her peers at school. Comments designed to create the impression that Bella might be interested in me … might be receptive if I were to 'ask her out'. And all the while, I have been subjected to her ongoing and vivid imaginings of the moment when I should actually invite Bella on a date – she seems to like the Prom scenario the best – and the ensuing debacle. As if I (or any other young man for that matter) would ever pose such a question to a girl in front of a cafeteria full of other students.

But this paper is not Jessica's doing. It smells of Bella, and Bella alone. Well, and cinnamon … and myself, faintly, for my hands did touch it when I wrapped the medicine in it.

My hand shakes, just a little, as I pick up the paper coin. It's because of Bella's scent, overwhelming me at close quarters. It's not because she has (_has she?_) chosen this paper on purpose. Not because she has made of it a message to me, is speaking to me.

The folding is quite well done, and I wonder if she is an enthusiast of origami. Some young girls are, even though it is a foreign culture's art. Or did she spend hours studying how I had folded the herb formula sheet? One thing is certain; she has succeeded in reproducing it.

I am NOT going to open this here. I slip the folded paper into my breast pocket and get to my car. Alice was right. I need to be ALONE. Completely alone. Away from the ghosts of other people's thoughts, no matter how distant and irrelevant.

I drive somewhat aimlessly. Away. I want to get _ away. _ Away from … everything. I end up at a headland, overlooking the sea. The only sounds are the crashing of the surf on the rocks far below, and the wind in the tops of the pines behind me. There is not a soul for miles in any direction. For a moment, the peace of it makes me happy.

I leave my car behind, and look out to sea. There is a stormy chop, although it is not raining just now. It's too cold for that, and I smell the snow that has been teasing the weather forecasters over the past few days. Here, it will be a salty, driving sleet when it comes.

I fish the paper coin out of my pocket, and open it carefully. It smells of her. Of her flesh, not her blood. The two are subtly different.

The inside of the paper is completely covered with a floral motif, drawn in colored pencil. It looks like a briar patch, with an occasional rose tucked here and there among the twining stems and green, green leaves. In the center, dead in the middle, are two words, written in a careful hand.

~ Thank You ~

The letters are neat, though perhaps labored over with some anxiety, for I can detect tiny deviations of the pen's path over the paper. Perhaps she had been intimidated by my penmanship? That had not been my intent. Or perhaps I am simply spinning some sort of fantastic story out of imagined clues; since the truth is that I have no idea whatsoever of what thoughts might _really_ pass through Bella Swan's head.

I stare at the paper, and a memory comes unbidden to my mind. In '23, Carlisle and I had visited England. He had wanted to show me his own birthplace. That quarter of London, had, sadly, become a slum since he had last seen it. To divert him, I had suggested that we travel to Buscot Park, in nearby Oxfordshire, where Burne-Jones' four-panel rendition of "The Legend of Briar Rose" had been open to public viewing.

As with everything else, my memory of the paintings is photographically precise. In the place on the paper where Bella has written "Thank You", I see the beauty on the bier, the thorny stems and leaves arching and enclosing her in a bower of green, red blooms scattered like small splashes of blood in their midst. It is the scene from the fourth panel, whose inscription reads:

"Here lies the hoarded love the key

To All the treasure that shall be

Come fated heart the gift to take

And smite the sleeping world awake."

Of course that has nothing to do with this extravagant doodle that Bella has made around her simple message. Edward Burne-Jones, and Buscot Park, and the salon room where these paintings hang, are nothing that a girl her age would have any inkling of. It is only in my own mind's eye that her sleeping form, which I have watched over each night for but a day short of a week, comes now to superimpose itself over the painting, and her two little words.

Numbly, I bring the paper up to my face, to bury my nose in its opened folds. The residual odors of the colored pencil and the herbs are distracting and annoying. I turn it over, to the outside, where Bella's scent is purer, and stronger. This thing has lain against her skin. There is no other way that it could smell so of her. Instinctively I know exactly where. That stolen place, seen so profanely through another's eyes. Creature that I am, I inhale deeply.

Bella is delicate and elusive. I breathe for many minutes with the paper on my face. Whatever bath products she uses smell like sage. Not real sage, but a chemist's imitation, too sharp, too alloyed with other ingredients. Annoying again. Yet, under that, is her native fragrance. I have not dared to breathe while in her room, but now I do so with impunity. Without her blood scent pouring through her pores, without her pulse beating through every chamber in my body, at last I can identify the subtle essence of her flesh. It is not rose, but mimosa: a flowering pea whose leaves fold instantly shut when disturbed by even the slightest touch. Of course. What else could she be, she whose interior is folded so tightly shut to me. The bashful leaf.

I have stood with my face in the paper for a very long time. Long enough that the outside, too, now, has begun to smell like me. I have ruined it.

A hoarse scream – mine – echoes down the coast, and my throat burns without mercy. Nothing could be further from the fated heart than I.

Somewhere beyond the banks of slate-colored clouds, the sun is sinking below the horizon out at sea. The dimness of the light makes the lines of Bella's drawing seem to glow to my unnatural vision. Her hand is untrained, the design naïve and pure. My chest hurts fiercely. Abominably. I tear the paper to shreds, and throw the pieces over the cliff with all my strength.

As if that could keep her safe from me.

I have to hunt. I know perfectly well where I will be going tonight, even though there is not even the pretense of an excuse any more. She is completely recovered. I am an imbecile, and a beast. I will, of course, scan wherever I go, but a full circuit of our perimeter will have to wait for another night. The wind swirls behind me, and carries the remains of Bella's drawing like confetti, far out over the black-clawed waves.

**

* * *

**

_A/N:_

_Dumb barter ~ a form of trade practiced among some peoples, in which the goods for exchange are left at and taken from a pre-selected spot without the exchanging parties ever coming face-to-face. Most frequently used when the two parties do not share a common language, or when there is uncertainty regarding each other's intentions. Also used as a method of offering by mortals in hope for omens or blessings from deities._

_._

_"I wonder if, like the fisherman with his shadow, she has somehow severed her scent from herself – with dancing and incantations and a silver sickle knife at the dark of the moon – to set it abroad to walk on its own."_

_This is a reference to the fairy tale by Oscar Wilde, The Fisherman and His Soul, first published in the 1891 collection, A House of Pomegranates. It tells the tale of a young fisherman who, for love of a mermaid, cuts off his soul (the shadow at his feet) and sends it out alone into the world, while he and his heart join with the beloved mermaid under the sea. Full text of the haunting and tragic story may be found here:_

_http:(double slash)www(dot)artpassions(dot)net/wilde/fisherman(dot)html_

_It is highly likely that Edward would have read this story as a boy, (a new, illustrated edition was published in 1915), and perhaps again as a vampire ..._

_._

_The Legend of Briar Rose is the title of a series of paintings about the story of Sleeping Beauty, done by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. The four original paintings - The Briar Wood, The Council Chamber, The Garden Court and The Rose Bower - and an additional ten adjoining panels, were completed between 1885 and 1890. Running beneath each of the major panels are the stanzas from a poem written expressly for the paintings by Burne-Jones' friend, William Morris. In the time that Edward is remembering, they were (and are still today) located at Buscot Park in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, which would have been about a 4 hour journey from London by horse-drawn carriage, somewhat less if by the motor cars of the day._

_The complete article, including pictures of each of the four original paintings, and the full text of the accompanying poem, may be found here:_

_http:(double slash)wikipedia(dot)org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Briar_Rose_


	23. The Owl Called Her Name

_**The Owl Called Her Name**_

_The nests of the two-leggeds are dangerous. When I was newly fledged, I followed a rat into one. I caught the rat, but found myself trapped. I bruised my wings and lost many feathers, but could not find my way out. _

_Parched with thirst, and almost starved – even with the rat – I waited. Then, one of their children came, and opened a hole. I fled into daylight. The crows found me, but I reached a dark wood, and I lived._

_The nests of the two-leggeds are dangerous … and yet, sometimes there is food inside. I never follow again. But sometimes, waiting is rewarded._

_Within my territory, there is such a place. Squirrels, chipmunks, field mice: all find their way inside. They are not trapped. For them, it is a great tree, a burrow; and they make their nests and trails in it. Therefore, __**my**__ trail through the air always passes close by. I listen … for the tiny squeaks, the light scratching, the flash of movement. There are plenty of trees for waiting._

_Lately, I share this place with another. A hunter. Every night he has come, for a quarter turn of the hidden moon._

_This cold one has no hunger for the feathered tribes, so I keep my paths without fear._

_He pays no heed to the little prey, so I do not begrudge him the choicest limb._

_And ever since the second night, he has gone __**inside**__ to wait. More than once, his presence has driven the small ones out … to me. So, now, I look for him. Wait for him._

_For waiting is rewarded._

_This night he comes late: long, long after dark, with a cold sea wind on his trail._

_His prey lies inside. He knows the ways of this nest. He no longer lingers in the tree, but glides up the sheer wall – as silent as I on my soft-feather wings – and opens and enters, easily._

_From my place, I watch his hunting, and wait for mine._

_Each night it is the same. His prey sleeps on a shelf. He takes his perch on the rocking branch. She lies before him, yet he never swoops. Though his great thirst burns, and spears the night with pangs of want._

_This night is no different from any other. She moves and whispers under her coverings of sleep; and he crouches, still as death, on his branch. His posture is drawn up and hunched, like mine. His eyes stare gold, like mine. Perhaps we are related by more than chance, this hunter, he and I._

_A very long time, we wait. The air grows colder, and icy snow begins to send its needles down._

_There._

_Sleeping still, she turns and sighs, and then … she speaks his name. Frozen on the branch, he has no voice – not even breath to carry it. But all of the arrows in his heart are changed to flowers._

_There is no hunting here. _

_I spread my wings, and answer for him as I leave. _

_**Is … a bell … ahhh **__ … rings behind me in the skittering air._

_

* * *

_

_A/N: The Kwakiutl (__Kwakwaka'wakw ~ __a First Nations people of Vancouver and British Columbia) believe that if one hears the owl call one's name it means that one's days are drawing to a close._

_The sound of the owl's call may be heard here:_

_http:(double slash)www(dot)owlpages(dot)com/sounds/Strix-occidentalis-1(dot)mp3_


	24. Morning

**Morning**

I dreamed of a red fish, with hooked, black mouth and silver scales, swimming against the stream. The sun was shining down on it, through the bright water, and the scales gleamed back, with the color of the moon. But then, as I watched, the scales all fell away. They fell like snowflakes, like raindrops. And I saw that they turned into minnows, more than I could count: turning and schooling in the water there, their silver sides flashing. Then they wheeled, like darts of light, and raced each other to the sea.

In the dream I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe. My chest was filled with tears, and I don't even know why.

* * *

_Knock three times on the ceiling_

_if you wa-ant me_

_Twice on the pipe - *clink, clink*_

_if the answer is no-o-o_

Oh,_ Dad._

He's got the oldies station blasting away from the clock radio in his room. It's his way of making sure I get up in time, just in case I sleep through my own alarm.

_*Thump, thump, thump* - means you'll meet me_

_in the ha-allway_

This song was old when my _dad _was a kid … maybe even when my grandma was.

_Twice on the pipe - *clink, clink*_

_means you ain't gonna sho-o-ow_

Well, maybe not. Grandma was pretty old – forty-something – when she had Dad. That's why she's already gone, now, I guess. Dad said she came from around here, but left when she was young. Never came back until after she had him. I never heard anything about a grandpa.

I'd asked, wasn't Swan my grandpa's name? But Dad had said no. Grandma never took any man's name. Swan was the name she'd been born with. I wonder if that was hard for my dad, growing up, to not even have a father's name. Maybe that's why he's so tight with Uncle Billy. Uncle Billy's not that much older than my dad. But old enough to be a big brother … I wonder if that was a problem for my mom, too … marrying her mother-in-law's name.

Why am I trying to unravel this now? It's not mine to unravel. Except that I guess single parenting must run in my family.

I roll over and put my head under the pillow.

And there's Edward's medicine recipe, all folded up, right next to my face. Reminding me what I did yesterday. And how much I wish I hadn't. What is wrong with me?

It had seemed like a good idea when I was writing the words. Nothing fancy, just 'thank you'. But written on the paper that he'd wrapped the medicine in. And then folded, just like he had folded his. Actions. Because I don't know how to do it with words. But that made the two little words look so bare on the page, so, I thought … a little decoration.

I should never have put it in his locker. All that hesitation for three days was a message. I should have listened. Should have just kept it here with me. Mine and his, keeping each other company under my pillow.

Or over my thumping heart.

My face is all hot, now. He's going to think I'm the Luna Lovegood of Forks. I hope he won't find it. But I know he will. Maybe he already has.

I don't want to go to school today. Not that he would actually ever _say_ anything to me, but … I ball myself up in the quilts and try to disappear. Try to find my way back to the dream I was dreaming, just before 'knock three times' woke me up. I have an ache in my chest and a lump in my throat, and I think, if only I could see the fish again, if only I could figure out what it all means, then I might feel better.

It's no use. The dream is gone, now, and morning is here instead.

I'm still hearing a clinking sound. It's not the song. It's the radiator in my room, under the window. Yes, this house has really old-fashioned hot water radiators for heat. This used to be my grandma's house, actually, although I don't have any memory of her in it. All of my memories of her are living in a little condo type place in an old people's village, out by Neah Bay. I think I can actually count on my fingers how many times I ever saw her in my whole life.

It must have gotten colder overnight for the pipes to be knocking like they are. I crawl out of bed with my quilts all around me, and take a look out the window. Can't see much, because it's still pretty dark, but I can hear the rain clicking and scratching against the panes.

I try to forget my stupidity with Edward by concentrating on my same old routine. Bathroom, get dressed, turn off the radio, grab all my stuff, and head downstairs. I can smell the coffee down in the kitchen. There's just a little hint of cinnamon down there, too. My dad never said anything about it. I guess I should be glad that I never had to tell him any lies, but now the medicine is all finished, and I've thrown away the dregs of the herbs. This last lingering scent of it just makes me feel sad.

"Morning, Dad!" I call.

No answer.

"Dad?"

There's no one in the kitchen, just the coffee smell and an empty cup in the sink.

Did he go to work already? I go out to the porch to check. It's six thirty and starting to get light at this hour, now, and I realize I've been in Forks for almost a month.

The cruiser is right there in the driveway.

"Dad … ?"

Nothing. Just the rain clicking and swishing all around.

This is weird. I run inside.

He's not upstairs. Bathroom's empty. So is his bedroom. So is my room. (Why would I even look for him there?) I check every room in the house, even go down, bent over double, in the damp and nasty crawlspace, with the light bulb swinging and shadows jumping, and remembering every slasher movie I ever chickened out on watching.

"Dad?"

By the time I'm back in the kitchen, I'm fully panicked, and so I just run out of the house.

"_Dad?"_

Down the porch stairs, barely take two steps on the concrete walk, and both feet fly out from under me. I land, hard, on my butt. It hurts.

I hear the rumbling of my monster rolling into the driveway. The engine cuts, then my dad's voice –

"Bella!"

In an instant he's next to me.

"Bella! What happened?"

I feel like an idiot. What was I so scared of? And why didn't I notice that my truck was gone?

"Sorry, Dad, I just …" _can't seem to stay upright even on solid ground that isn't moving at all._

My dad helps me up and dusts me off, puts his sheriff hat on me for good measure, to keep me dry. I get a sudden memory of his hat on me, so big that it comes down over my eyes, and me, proud as can be. The air is still stinging my hands, and I realize that it's sleet, not rain, that's falling.

"I got chains on your tires."

He's ushering me back inside with both hands.

"You eat yet?"

"Um …"

He grabs some cereal out of the pantry for me.

"You still got time. Go easy on the roads when you leave. It's pretty slick out there."

"Thanks, Dad." The adrenaline crash is making me tear up. God, I don't want him to see. I get real busy with my cereal.

"Gotta head out, Bells. Power plant guard over in Mason turned up dead this morning."

Well _that_ got my attention!

He sees that I'm rattled. "Guys on the scene think it was some kind of animal. They've asked me to help out."

"Animal … ?" I can't help thinking of the snowboarder. I'd never even asked if they'd found her ok. They must have. Dad would have said something. _Wouldn't he?_

"Fred 'n I are heading over with the dogs, see if we can catch a trail before it goes cold." He pulls a twenty out of his wallet. "You get yourself something at Bessie's after school. Don't go wanderin' off."

Now he's taking his hat off my head and putting it back on his. I follow him out to the door.

"Don't wait up for me, Bells. It's gonna be a long day."

"Ok, Dad." I'm hanging on the porch post as he climbs into the cruiser. "Be careful."

"Always am."

And he's gone.

* * *

It's light, now, by the time I get to school, and so I can see Edward Cullen, standing by his silver Volvo. Scowling. If it were sunny, the bright ice coats on all the trees would be sparkling, just like the fish scales in my dream. That's something I've never seen, actually, except in pictures. Every twig and branch transformed into a prism of light. I'm not going to see it today, either. The sky is low and misty and grey; and Edward is scowling.

He's found my little 'thank you' note in his locker. I'm sure of it. And I'm just as sure that he didn't like it. At all. Because, as I very carefully pull into a spot away from everybody else in the ice-coated parking lot, I can see that he is scowling _at me_.

And I'm right back to not understanding him at all. Even if my note was stupid and dorky, it was also completely private. If he didn't like it, all he had to do was rip it up and throw it away. No one would ever even know. So what is there to be so mad about? And if he really hates me so much, why did he bring me medicine in the first place? _What does he __**want**__ from me?_

It's my fault. With every jumbled minute of this morning running around in my head, and feeling Edward's eyes on me, I'm not paying attention. I've got my backpack on the hood of the truck, and I'm rummaging through it, because I have a sinking suspicion that my English notes are in my other binder: the one that's still in my room. I don't hear the screeching sound. I don't turn around. Until it's too late. Much too late.

My gaze crosses Edward's as I turn. He's standing there by his car with his mouth open. Now all I can see is Tyler's van. Big, and dark and green, and skidding straight for me. His mouth is open, too. He's trying to turn the van away from me, but that only makes it worse. The back end is swinging around. I'm going to be squished between the side of Tyler's van and the side of my truck. Nothing matters any more. Not me. Not Edward's scowl. Not the two pieces of paper: one under my pillow; the other … who knows where.

I'm hit.

I'm down.

With a human roll cage wrapped around me.

It's Edward. He's got me. His body is so hard. There's no more room. The van is right on top of us. I'm tucked up tight against Edward's side. He's holding me with one arm. The other one is out straight. I'm going to be sick. Two thousand pounds of metal are screaming in against Edward's outstretched hand, and I'm going to see all of it: the bones splintering, the weight of the van telescoping his wrist to his shoulder. I scream. The metal screams. I hear breaking glass and we're both showered with flying hail.

I open my eyes. Edward's arm is fine. Tyler's van is stopped, stove in on the side. Edward is holding me close, right up against him. He's cold. I'm sure I am, too. I don't know where all my blood went, but it's sure as hell not in my face. Right now, I'm numb, but I'll be getting the shakes soon enough.

Edward's face is right next to mine. His beautiful, beautiful face. White as death, just like me; oh, but his lips are still red. I would give my life. I really would. Our eyes meet again. He's staring. What does it mean? His eyes are not black like I remember. They're golden, like the sun. Like a cat's eye. Like topaz. Wide, and fierce, and fearful. With his arm tight around me.

_Stay_, I think. _Stay._ Hold me forever.

Until the mourning dove sings.

And that's when he lets go of me. Stands up. Vaults over the back of my truck, light as a feather.

And he's gone.

* * *

The world comes back.

The sleet.

The shouting.

"Call 911! Somebody call 911!" They're yelling it over and over.

"Bella's in there! I saw Bella! She was standing next to her truck!"

Tyler is hanging half out of the passenger window of his van. It's been pretty much shattered, because the doorframe is stove in. He doesn't look good. He has a lot of blood on his face. He looks groggy, but he's starting to come around.

"I'm sorry, Bella. I'm really sorry."


	25. After

**After**

The gurney wheel is wobbling. It's squeaking and shimmying and rattling my bones. Tyler's getting dibs on the x-ray and CAT scan. They want to be sure his spine and brain are ok before they start working on his face. I wonder if he's going to be … disfigured …

The thought makes me feel light-headed and scared. I don't want to be here, but closing my eyes just takes me back to his van skidding toward me. Just like that, and everything is changed. What you thought your world was when you woke up in the morning is gone, and something else is in its place.

What would I do if I looked in the mirror and the face that I saw was … altered? If I could never get my old face – my real face – back, ever again?

My dad can't be here; I know that. I wonder if he's in the woods by now, tracking – what would it be? A bear, I guess. He'll be ok. He's good at what he does. He was an Eagle Scout. He's the one they call for stuff like this. I'll be ok, too. I've never done the whole hospital thing by myself, before, but I'm not eight anymore, either.

It's my turn for the machines now. In the meanwhile, someone has come to stick me with a needle for blood. Yes, the hospital is secretly staffed by vampires. Don't tell anyone.

I look away and close my eyes and think of Edward's face instead. So close to mine that I felt the breath of his nostrils exhale over my face. Sweet and cool. Like medicine. Like the breeze you long for in summer. And his eyes. _Not_ black. Golden. The color of honey with the sun shining through it. Even though this morning was as grey and dark as every other.

I hear someone saying they might send me to Port Angeles for an MRI. Please don't. And how come they're not sending Tyler?

I think about Edward. I think about my dad. I tell people my name and date of birth and no I'm not having any pain, about a zillion times. I get pushed around like meat on a slab from room to room to room.

X-ray was fast. CAT scan is slow. My head and upper body are in the machine, now, and my feet are sticking out. I'm supposed to hold really still. It's making a bunch of loud clinking noises. "Half an hour," the tech said. To get sliced six ways to Sunday by the radiation. "Try not to breathe." I hear new voices rushing by, out in the hall.

"… that boy … thousand times … seat belt …"

Must be Tyler's parents. Maybe they'll give me a ride home when all of this is done. If they're still here. I hope he's ok.

After CAT scan, I'm put back in one of the little screened-off bays – all by myself, now, since they're done with the tests and the needles, and I'm not hurt. I am hooked up to an I.V. drip, though. I watch the fluid go drip, drip, drip, from the bag into the little reservoir thingy that feeds it into the tube, and into my arm. The shakes come and go. Sometimes I feel a little nauseous. Sometimes I want to cry. I want to go home, now. I hope they don't really send me to Port Angeles. How will anybody ever find me over there?

I hear some kind of a commotion, over where I can't see. A door bangs against a wall.

"She's in station 2."

"Thanks."

It's my dad's voice, short and clipped.

I'm off the table before I even know what I'm doing. A sharp tug on my arm stops me. I almost fall. There's a little blood, but I haven't pulled it out, thank God.

"Bella!"

He's lifting me up and putting me back on the table. He's still strong enough to do that. I'm still small enough that he can.

"That boy's not driving again 'till he's thirty!"

"Dad, it wasn't his fault! There was ice. I couldn't even _walk_ without holding onto something …"

"Save it."

And then his hands are all over me. "Are you hurt? What did the docs say? Can you see ok?"

"Dad, I'm fine. Serious." I'm such a liar.

"Where's Carlisle?"

He came. My dad came.

"I hear the Chief's daughter is here."

The clear voice is like a call, and I look up to see a blond man walk through the swinging door into the ER. He is dressed in a very traditional and doctorly white coat, and although he isn't remarkably tall, his strides are long and quick.

In no time, he's here at the bed where I'm sitting, all cross-legged and clumsy and out of place. My Dad and he give each other the kind of short nods that men do when they've worked together before, on things that are serious and not pleasant.

"Carlisle."

"Charlie."

The doctor turns his attention to me.

… …

He is not a 'super-hottie surgeon'.

He is a seraph.

Somehow descended from heaven.

I'm staring like a fool – I don't even know how long – confusing his face with pictures of the Annunciation. But he never even blinks. His eyes are just gentle and kind, his mouth sweet and soft, as he offers me his hand.

Too close. Too close. Too beautiful. Straight nose, clear brow, pale skin; and flaxen hair that seems to glow under the fluorescent lights.

"Hello, Bella. I'm Dr. Cullen."

I realize that his eyes are golden, too. Darker than his hair. The same honey hazel as Edward's.

I say "Hi," back, and shake his hand.

It's as cool and smooth as a river stone.

That _is_ a rule, you know. All doctors have to have cold hands. They throw you out of medical school if you don't.

"How are you feeling, Bella?"

"I'm fine, actually. I don't even need to be here." All I want right now is to go home and curl up under the covers. Edward escaped all of this. The collar. The stretcher. The ambulance ride. The QUESTIONS. It's not fair. He left me. Just _left_ me. All alone on the little wedge of asphalt between Tyler's van and my truck. With the broken glass all around.

My Dad is talking.

"CAT scan show anything, Doc?"

"All clear. X-rays, too." Dr. Cullen has allowed himself a small smile, and for a moment I see, really see, how terribly youthful he is. He really _doesn't_ look that much older than his adopted children. No wonder people talk. Then he puts his professional face back on, and looks some generic doctor age again. "The Crowley boy is going to be fine, as well," he says. "Looks like we dodged the bullet this time."

My Dad just grunts at that. Tyler's going to be in his bad books for quite a while, yet.

Dr. Cullen turns back to me. "Bella, I know Dr. Lindsey has already examined you, but, with your permission …"

How can I say no?

Dr. Cullen runs his fingertips over my skull, shoulders, ribs and back, then presses on my stomach and tests my elbows, wrists and hands, knees, ankles and feet; all the while asking, "Does this hurt? Any pain when you move this way?" He is completely absorbed in every tiny movement, with his eyes half closed, and even cocking his head this way and that, as if listening to my joints as he puts them through their paces.

I don't know what he's looking for. Maybe he doesn't trust the machines. I only know that he is listening to me with his hands, knowing me all the way to the center of my bones, and … it's all right. There's something about his face, something so strangely sad, as though life is too precious to him. It makes me wonder where he may have practiced before coming here. Maybe he was in Iraq, too?

Last of all, he's taking out his penlight and shining it in my eyes, then making me follow as he moves it up and down and to all different sides. From start to finish, my Dad is watching everything like a hawk. I think he trusts Dr. Cullen more than the scanners, too.

"Any headache? Dizziness? Nausea?" I shake my head at each one. "Any blurry vision or flashes of light?"

"Edward saved me!"

I just blurt it out. It had been building up inside. All through the tests, and the waiting, and the rides back and forth on wobbly gurney wheels. Staring into Dr. Cullen's face, I can't hold it in even one second more.

My Dad looks sharply at the doctor.

"Your boy?"

"He saved my life," I repeat.

How can I say what had happened? The way Edward got to me so fast – too fast to even see – and stopped the skidding van with one hand … The nightmare that didn't happen … The mess that he and I should have been – body parts too smooshed together to ever separate. I'm shaking again.

"I think everyone was very, very lucky today, Bella," Dr. Cullen answers, putting his penlight back into the breast pocket of his coat. His free hand is on my shoulder; cool, even through my clothes, but steadying me all the same.

My Dad's hands are shoved deep into his own pockets. "So, can I take her home, now, Doc?"

Dr. Cullen looks slightly uncomfortable. "Well, actually, Charlie, I'd like to keep her here for observation."

"What? NO! _Dad -!_" I want to do my shaking and recovering in my own room, in my own bed, under my too-thin quilts, with the new bulb in the nightlight shining in the corner.

"You said her X-rays were clear."

"They are. But she's suffered a head injury, and twenty-three hour observation is standard, even when the patient isn't showing any symptoms. You know that, Charlie."

"My head is _fine_!"

Dr. Cullen smiles gently and runs his fingers down the back of my skull. It's a little tender, and I wince before I can stop myself. But it was Edward's knuckles that had smashed into the pavement as we fell, not my head. He'd put his hands under my head, made a cage around me of his arms and legs. I remember the elbows of his jacket and the knees of his pants when he got up. They were shredded.

Dr. Cullen is talking to me. "Your brain is made of very soft and delicate tissue, Bella. And it's one of the most highly vascularized organs in your body. A bleed could develop later, even hours after the injury."

"Can't my dad just bring me in if I start to feel bad?"

"He could. But do you want him to be up all night doing neurochecks on you? And worrying about getting you here in time to avoid brain damage if something does go wrong?"

Wow, he sure knows how to make me stop resisting. I just hang my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my dad glancing at Dr. Cullen with a shit-eating grin. I'm out-numbered and out-conspiracied. Again.

Dr. Cullen seems to take pity on me.

"How about this, Bella. We'll just admit you for the night. If you're still doing fine by morning, I'll have the nurses discharge you in time for school tomorrow."

He's looking at me with that strange, sad kindness in his eyes again.

"Do we have a deal?"

His golden, golden eyes.

Just like Edward's.

What are the odds of that? When they're not even related.

I nod my head.


	26. The Loony Bin

**The Loony Bin**

I can't believe it's only one in the afternoon. That's because the whole ordeal started at seven thirty. I'm going to be so bored. Thank God Dad went and got my backpack and books from the school for me. He couldn't stay, though.

I think of the security guard, and his family. They could never in their wildest dreams have imagined they'd wake up to this. Why did I cheat death, and it came for him, instead? Or why is Tyler's face all covered with bandages, and I don't even have a scratch?

If my mom were here, she'd be camped out in the room with me. We'd be playing scrabble on the bed. That's what she always used to do. Sneaking me stuff from the vending machines. Making the nurses bring one of those recliner chairs for her to sleep on overnight. Then making it up to them by taking care of me when I had to go to the bathroom, and helping them change the sheets when I knocked over the water pitcher.

If my mom knew I was in the hospital right now, she'd probably jump on a plane and fly straight here. But I'd still be already home by the time that she arrived. Which would leave her and me and Dad with the awkwardness of all three of us under one roof.

I close my eyes, and wonder why I wish for something that I can't even really remember. My cell phone stays where it is.

* * *

Edward.

Why did he leave me there like that?

Why didn't he stay?

The clock on the wall has hardly moved. Maybe it will be almost time for seventh period forever. I wonder if Lauren will come visit Tyler when school lets out. I bet she will. I wonder who else will come, though God knows how they're going to get here now that Tyler's van is out of commission. His parents are going to kill him, once he gets out of the hospital. My dad's going to have to wait in line.

Jessica and Mike will probably end up hitching. I guess they'll visit me, too – if they can find me. I'm on a different unit than Tyler. They put him on the surgical unit, I guess because of his stitches. I'm on the medical floor – "the loony bin," I heard one of the nurses calling it. The people here aren't really going to get better. They're the ones with the diabetes, and liver failure, and kidney failure, and heart failure, the alcohol and strokes and dementia: just hitching along in the long slow slide, through sickness, old age, and death. A lot of times they don't even know where they are or what's happening to them. They yell at the nurses and try to escape from their rooms.

The loony bin.

Maybe Angela will find me.

I'd like that.

* * *

I can't work up the interest to open my books, and so I fall asleep instead. When I wake up, I don't know what time it is, only that it's time for vital signs and neurocheck, just like Dr. Cullen said. The nurse is bored. She can see that there's nothing wrong with me. She's finished soon enough, and I have the room to myself again. I probably missed the kids from school because I was sleeping. I'm still hooked up to an I.V. I have no clue why. If I were going to go into shock, it would have happened a long time ago. Now I have to drag the thing with me when I go to the bathroom. I close the door to my room so no one will see my bare butt as I walk by. Yes, all my clothes went home with Dad. Too wet and messed up from my roll in the parking lot. I do what I have to do, then curl up on the bed again, feeling sorry for myself.

I'm still waffling between television and Trigonometry when I hear a knock at the door.

"Bella?"

It's Edward's voice.

_Edward?_

"Are you awake?"

Oh my God, his voice is so soft. So tender. I need to answer him, but all my insides are clamped up tight.

The door opens just a crack, and I see him peeking in.

"May I come in?"

I nod, since he can see me, now, and I still don't have a voice. What is _wrong_ with me?

He comes in … carefully, and stands just inside the door. He looks as nervous as I feel.

"Are you ok?"

I nod again. He came back. He came back to see me.

He walks a little way toward me, looking like he wants to say something, but doesn't know where to start.

Me, too.

Thank you.

Thank you for the medicine.

Thank you for saving me.

Thank you for … for …

"I'm sorry," he says.

_Sorry?_

"For what?"

"For knocking you down. I was … so rough."

Yes, but consider the alternative.

"It's okay. I'm not hurt."

_And neither are you. Which is impossible. I saw …_ _I saw …_

Edward is not gay. Or maybe he is. But that's not what's queer about him.

"How did you do it?"

Edward is acting strangely. He has both hands together, like praying, but making a tent over his nose and mouth. He's looking at me with a weird expression on his face. Oh my God, when did I get out of the bed and start walking toward him? With my bare butt hanging out in the back! I'm mortified, and start grabbing and fumbling with the blanket off the bed. It takes me three whole minutes to get myself properly wrapped and not fouled up with the I.V. line. I'm pretty sure he never saw anything, but my cheeks are just burning anyway. When I finally look up at him, he looks like he's going to panic and bolt out the door screaming.

What is _wrong_ with us?

He still has his hands over his face. If he didn't look so scared, I'd think it was to keep me from seeing that he was laughing at me.

After a while he takes his hands down, and I see he has that look again, like he wants to say something, but doesn't know how.

I wait. I don't want to push him. But the silence just gets longer, so finally I just go back to my question.

"How did you do it?"

He frowns. "Do what?"

Jeez, Edward. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than … whatever, able to stop skidding vans with just one hand …

"How did you get to me so fast?"

"Bella, I was standing right next to you."

_What?_

"What?"

"I was standing right next to you, Bella."

He's moved closer, and he's staring at me intensely, like he's trying to hypnotize me or something.

"That's _bull_-dinky! I _saw_ you! You were standing next to your car. You were all the way across the lot!" _You __**never**__ stand next to me. You never come anywhere __**near**__ me. _

_You said I stink._

"Bella, you hit your head." He's moved closer to me again, still staring hard. "You probably have a little bit of amnesia."

"I didn't hit my head! Don't lie, Edward!" _You were there, too. You __**know**__ I didn't hit my head because it was __**your**__ hands that were protecting me._

And in the heat of the moment I've grabbed his shoulders and I'm trying to kick his shins. Trying but not succeeding. He's dodging me expertly, and keeping his balance all the while, but with the most horrified expression on his face.

"Bella, STOP! You're going to pull out your I.V.!" And he catches me, and stops me from doing just that, not to mention falling over from meeting nothing but air with my kicks.

The whole exchange has been carried on in heated whispers, and now we're just staring at one another again: me red and breathing hard, him white, and still as a stone. A magically fragrant stone. I remember it from Biology class. That first, awful day. I'd thought it was one of the girls, wearing perfume … or something. But it's Edward.

"Don't lie to me, Edward. Just don't lie." _I'm trying to understand you. Don't you want me to understand you?_

"Bella."

"I know what I saw."

He takes his hands off me. Very quietly, he asks, "What exactly do you think that you saw, Bella?"

"You stopped the van. With one hand. We both should be dead, Edward. You and me. We both should be _dead_. But we're not. We're not."

"No one's going to believe you, Bella. If you try to tell them that I ran across a parking lot in less than a second, stopped Tyler's van with one hand … They'll think that you're crazy."

_What?_ Who the hell does he think that I'm going to talk to about this except him?

He's got his hands over his nose and mouth again, but he's still looking at me intensely, as if he's trying to bore into me with his eyes, which are dark now, almost back to black. After a few breaths he takes his hands down. "If you go around saying things like that … they'll keep you in the hospital longer. They might even lock you up."

And suddenly the light bulb goes on in my head.

"You didn't come here to see if I'm ok. You only came because you're worried about your … your _secret_ … whatever it is." _You didn't come back for me. You didn't come back for me at all._ "You just want to make sure I don't tell on you!"

I don't say it loudly. We're standing right next to each other. He can hear me fine. My eyes only come up to his collarbones. I have to look up to see his mouth, see his lips pressed together in a straight thin line. My nose is just a little above his heart. He smells so nice. I want to cry.

"You should have just let the van crush me Edward! Then you wouldn't have anything to worry about!"

I hear him gasp, look up to see his eyes wide with shock, and … grief?

"How can you say that," he whispers.

"How can you think I would be such a backstabber?"

Suddenly, I can't stand to be this close to him any more. His fragrance is everywhere. It's not like any kind of cologne, or even perfume, I've ever smelled. It's _not_ cologne. It's _him_. He smells like a forest, only better. Like some kind of incense, but from skin, not something you burn. It makes me want to just throw myself into his arms and bury my face in his chest. Just inhale him. But I can't do that. I can't throw myself on the bed, either, because I'm wrapped up in a blanket, and tethered to an I.V. pole. I have to back away slowly, and climb onto the bed carefully, looking and feeling like an idiot. But I finally make it, and pull the rest of the blanket up over my head. From my hiding place I can yell at him; but in a small voice, because I still don't want anyone else to hear.

"Go away, Edward! Just leave me alone!"

The room is filled with utter silence. No breathing. No footsteps. Nothing. He is gone. I'm sure he is gone. But as long as I keep the bedclothes up over my head, there is no _proof_ that he isn't there. I am free to pretend that he has just gone over to sit down on the chair by the foot of the bed. In my imagination, that's where he stays, sitting in the chair. Not like a civilized person, but crouched, like some kind of angel gargoyle, with his knees drawn up, watching over me in the semi-dark.

Until the nurse comes in to check my vital signs.


	27. Secrets and Lies

**Secrets and Lies**

"_Go away, Edward! Just leave me alone!"_

I have hurt her.

She looked so small, even on the narrow hospital bed, huddled where she had made her retreat, the blanket drawn up over her head. Hiding from me. Stifling her breath. But not to my hearing. Every soft, strangled hitch bore it in upon me.

I have hurt her.

My visit to her was _necessary_. The consequences of exposure ... But now I only feel mean-spirited, and a bully.

There is nothing I can do. I cannot even speak to her. Covering my nose and mouth as I did, just to draw breath. She must think I am a lunatic. And still my thighs and shoulders twitched incessantly, each spasm an aborted leap, as the beat of her heart, the blood of her cheeks, flooded my mind. Red delicious apple of my eye. Even as I walk away from her room, I cannot stop myself from questing her scent, her taste, from amidst the antiseptic and rot of this place. The cage of my hands barely masked her at all.

I cannot even speak to her, and with that thought, comes the next: I want to. I _want_ to speak to her. I want to know all her secrets. And I want to tell her mine.

"_She's a teenage girl, Carlisle. She's going to say __**something**__. It's just a matter of when ... and where ... and to __**whom.**__"_

_Rosalie!_ What is she doing here?_ I told her I would take care of this!_ She doesn't trust me. In her eyes, I am a boy, _still._ Forever. Even though I am older than she.

Rosalie and Carlisle are in his office. Their voices are pitched too softly, even for vampire hearing, from where I am on the medical floor; but their thoughts are crystal-clear as they speak.

The image of Bella's face is in Carlisle's mind. I feel a constriction in my chest. She has _seen_ him, _truly_ seen him. The look of transfixed wonder in her eyes is one that we know, even if she has not yet recognized it herself.

_Poor child,_ he thinks.

I cannot race to his office. Even at human running speed, it would cause comment. That is the last thing that I need or want, right now. I must walk ... Walk! ... At unhurried human pace, my insides churning, my face locked in a bland mask.

Rosalie is furious with Bella, and with me. Though Jasper is the one whose mind sees patterns instantly, assembling strategies and outcomes like magic puzzle pieces, she, too, has a share of insight where it concerns her. As the weeks have passed, Rosalie has become embroiled with her own picture of what my obsession with this human girl is doing to our family. I have seen the shape of it, in hazy outline, as she has guarded my passages through the hallways at school. Now it stands forth, sharp and solid behind her thoughts. Our family as an arctic cliff, Bella as a wedge, driving deep fault lines through the face. Alice and I on one side, she and Emmett on the other, Jasper riven in two, Carlisle and Esme powerless to hold it all together.

Carlisle's face betrays him and Bella both. A glacier splits and falls into the sea.

"_She's __**seen **__you, hasn't she?"_ Rosalie demands. _"When you were __**examining**__ her!"_

_God forgive me,_ he thinks.

"_We're never going to get another chance like this again, Carlisle."_

I cannot believe what she is suggesting. In earnest. To Carlisle. This is going too far. It's not _necessary_. And it will only _force_ the split that she dreads. But she believes that _my_ actions have already done that.

Carlisle's mind recoils, from Rosalie's intention, but also from his own memories. He has seen how the three princes of Volterra deal with lawbreakers. If our family should become conspicuous, for any reason ... there will be visitors.

"_It will be clean," _Rosalie reasons, _"for __**everyone**__ - her, her father, EDWARD." _

I must keep this wretched snail's pace down an endless corridor, ferrying a heart that does not move at all.

"_I know how to do this, Carlisle. It's an expected risk with head injury. She won't even have to suffer. I can see to that."_

Rosalie's plan forms at light speed in her mind. Slipping into Bella's room undetected will be too easy. Bella is young, and stable, and independent in the room. Haven't I already heard the nurses' thoughts, shunting her to the side in their attention? No one will bother going into Bella's room tonight except for the prescribed neurochecks, which are now spaced at four-hour intervals.

Or unless she rings. But there will be none of that.

_Thirty more steps_ to Carlisle's door...

A syringe loaded with high-dose heparin, drawn from the pulmonary embolism patient's I.V. bag in CCU. Push it into Bella's line, then just a little shake, too fast for human vision to detect. The internal whiplash will splash Bella's brain against the inside of her cranium. The dura mater, meningeal membranes and cerebrospinal fluid were never made to cushion against the accelerations that a vampire's hands can deliver. Even without the heparin to sabotage natural clotting, Bella has no chance.

I feel sick. Carlisle can't permit this. He just _can't!_

The thought of her in that bed, never knowing what had been done to her, very likely never even waking up ... No external marks to betray us, just the ever-expanding pool of blood inside. Perhaps, if a nurse should chance to look in on her early, the damage may be detected in time that she might live. But she will never speak.

Through Rosalie's eyes, I see the mask of horror and sorrow that is Carlisle's face.

The door at last!

And still, I cannot throw it open, cannot scream, cannot hurl Rosalie bodily through the wall. I have to _knock,_ and enter normally. I close the door behind me, and finally my teeth are bared.

"Don't you _dare!_" In our hyper-fast sotto voce, it sounds so ludicrous.

Rosalie rounds on me. "You think I _like_ doing this, Edward? Cleaning up _your_ mess? _Her fate_ was solving _everything_, saving us all, even _you_, dammit! How long do you really think you can hold off? It will only be worse for you, the longer you wait." She gathers all of her ghosts in one basket: exposure, our family broken by irrevocable quarrel, an image of me with a dead Bella in my arms, hating myself forever, even as I lick the last of her blood from my lips.

The last one pierces me. I wouldn't do that. _Would I?_ Could I? Still? Yes. I can. I almost did. Right there in her room. A dozen times before our brief conversation was through. Is there really no end to this except in her death?

_It will only be worse for you, the longer you wait._

Rosalie's expression swings from resentful sympathy back to pure resentment. "Why did you have to _interfere?_ Now _I_ have to do something hateful, because none of the _men_ around here has the stones!"

Except for Jasper, perhaps. But Alice would never forgive him. No, he won't do this either.

"She's not going to say anything!" I'm pleading. _Pleading_. With _Rosalie_, for God's sake!

Carlisle jumps on my words. "What do you mean, son?"

Rosalie jumps, too. "You _talked_ to her about this? Christ, Edward, have you lost your mind? Are you _stupid?_"

"What did she say?" Carlisle asks.

"What did YOU say?" is the question that Rosalie finds much more important.

I am stupid, but not stupid enough to disclose Bella's and my conversation. I revert to snarling and threatening.

"Don't you touch her, Rose! _No one!_ No one touches her!" _She's __**mine**_.

"Will you listen to yourself?"

I hear myself all too clearly. I am like a lion hoarding its kill.

I have seen the entire scene in the ER as it replayed in Carlisle's mind. It is the only card I have. I pray that it is a trump, and not a feeble straw.

"Her father is your _friend_, Carlisle. He _trusts_ you. _She_ trusts you. She trusts _all_ of us." _Oh, no! Why did I add that last? I __**am**__ stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!_

Rosalie is rolling her eyes. "You see? You _see_? I rest my case."

But Carlisle won't have it. Faces are passing through his mind. Human faces. Men, women, children. Old and young. Hale and infirm. Centuries of them. All doomed to die, some day or other. An ageless, pale, patrician face, with transparent skin and long, black hair, mocking and pitying him for his "attachments." And still, year after year, he has placed his hands upon their bodies. Easing. Mending. Giving them a few more moments in the sun. Receiving in return meaning for his own.

And most recently, making some of them into beings like himself.

"We shall not decide this in haste," he says at last.

"Edward already _has_, can't you see that? _In haste_."

"All the more reason, Rosalie, that we must deliberate." And he looks at me meaningfully. "As a family."

Rosalie glares, and throws her thoughts at me like daggers. _I'm never going to forgive you for this. Never. There's no way this can end well, now._ And she thrusts all of her fears into my face, because she knows that I can see them in her mind. _Just go ask Alice. I __**dare**__ you to. You stupid, selfish little __**boy**__!_

She is right, of course. I cannot help but hang my head. If my body could do so, I would be crying. Thank God that I cannot. It would be the last straw.

Carlisle can't hear what has just transpired between Rosalie and me, but he sees my response. He moves to put his arm around me.

"Edward, go home. Wait for me." He glances at Rosalie. "All of you. We shall resolve this. I promise you. We shall find a way, a way that we all can bear." _As we must,_ he thinks sadly. "Do you hear me, Edward?"

"Yes."

"Go now, both of you. Make peace with one another. I shall finish my shift; you shall all go to school tomorrow, just as always. We meet to form a plan in the afternoon."

"What if that's _too late?_"

"Sufficient unto the day, Rose. I have made provisions that any testament of hers can be easily dismissed."

Keeping the girl here for "observation." Hacking her radiology results. These are the provisions that flow through Carlisle's mind. Concussion, post-traumatic confusional state, retrograde amnesia: he has an arsenal of diagnoses prepared, and is already arranging her medical record to back them up. He does not relish the thought of brow-beating Bella into believing that true memories are false ... but he certainly will do that if it becomes _necessary_.

So will I.

For now, all that he says is, "Let us not borrow trouble."

_Horse shit,_ Rosalie thinks. "You coming?"

"Yes." I do not meet her eyes.

Carlisle's pager goes off.

"Be careful, Edward," he says. _What does he think I am going to do now?_ But a foreign body ingestion in the ER is going bad. He has to go, and so do we.


	28. Caliban

**Caliban**

_Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,_

_Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not._

_Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments_

_Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices_

_That, if I then had waked after long sleep,_

_Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,_

_The clouds methought would open, and show riches_

_Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked_

_I cried to dream again._

_~ William Shakespeare, __The Tempest__, Act 3, Scene 2_

Rosalie has me by the ear, in her mind at least, if not physically, as we go out to the parking lot. Night has already fallen. The freezing temperatures that had made the school's tarmac a death trap for Bella have abated over the course of the day, just enough that we are surrounded by a weary drizzle. I feel the cold, tiny droplets slowly adding up enough to soak into my hair. If we stay outside long enough for our body temperatures to equalize with the air, it will only feel wet.

I hear Rosalie's wry annoyance with the weather. It is our cover, but also our curse. The train of her thoughts plays forward, turns sour, then bitter, in her mind.

_It's like living in a tomb. We can't even walk down the street on a sunny day. _

She conjures, not a memory, but a fantasy, spun from movies and photographs: herself in a stylish cream suit, with jauntily matching cap and gloves, Emmett tricked out in Sunday best, the two of them strolling arm in arm down a maple-lined boulevard; blue sky and puffy clouds above, children playing under a lawn sprinkler, sunlight dancing in rainbows from the drops.

"You're going to follow me, right?" she says, as she opens the door to her car. She has purposely parked it right next to mine.

"Yes, Rosalie, I am." I need to hunt, but I feel too dispirited right now to do anything but follow her meekly home.

"I'll be watching you."

Why does she have to be so prickly? Is it because she knows that I saw her unhappy daydream just now? That's not my fault. I never asked for this gift. Any more than I ever asked for Isabella Swan to be born … much less find her way to Forks. And only a fool would ask to be tortured as that girl's scent tortures me.

It takes effort to block out the thoughts of others, just as it takes my family effort to screen and disguise their thoughts from me, but we have all learned how to do it over the years. Rosalie and I drive homeward - she before, I behind - with some semblance of privacy for us both.

Tonight, neither of us challenges the local speed limit. Instead, I am given the dark, wet forest, sliding backward on either side. The tall, straight pines come right to the edge of the road, rank upon mossy rank, passing through the headlights' nimbus, turning briefly green, then back to black again. Shadow and darkness lead my eyes inward, to the ferns and hidden sanctuaries. The memory of a song runs through it.

_Stronger than any mountain cathedral_

_Truer than any tree ever grew_

_Deeper than any forest primeval _

_I am in love with you._

The man who wrote these words is dying. Alice has seen it. He will not live out the end of this year. Struck down by one of the countless ills that human flesh is heir to. I wonder why I am alive, or if one can even call it that.

Everyone is there when we arrive at the house. They are eager to take me in, and yet uncertain as well. They try to hide their thoughts, but I am actively searching for Alice's. What has she seen, now that Bella knows … something? Alice is hiding from me and that only makes it worse. I am certain that Bella will never knowingly "tell" on me, but if Alice sees an accident … I have only my imagination to lead me. And all-too-recent memory.

Bella talks in her sleep.

I stand petrified on the doorstep. Surely her father wouldn't give credence to any vague mumblings. Do girls her age still sleep over at each other's houses? No. They go drinking. At each other's houses when their parents aren't home. In cars parked in some god-forsaken neck of the woods when they are. In clubs so far from home that no one knows their faces. But Bella wouldn't. She's not like that. Yet. Humans change. The thought of Bella drinking … drunk … fills me with a strange sickness. I don't even want to think about it. Surely, if we just move, anything she might ever say about the accident won't matter.

Esme is embracing me. "Come inside, Edward." In another time, I would melt into her arms. Now I can only follow her stiffly across the threshold. Emmett puts a large hand on my shoulder. "Carlisle's bidden us to wait, and that's what we're doin'. Ain't no one goin' to harm her tonight."

I hear the assent in all of their thoughts, even Rosalie's, grudging though it may be. Perversely, all I want to do is flee. The visions bloom in Alice's mind. The excuses I will make about thirst and hunting. The empty room with the nightlight shining against the dark. Jasper picks it up, too. He knows my moods as intimately as his own. _Loose cannon_, he thinks again. And all I care about is whether they will try to stop me. Or, worse yet, _supervise_ me.

Alice's thoughts dwell on the possible routes I may take to Bella's house, and I begin to worry anew about what she is _hiding_. How much has my impulsive rescue this morning changed things? Is our family's decision already fated? At whose hands will she die? We have been able to avoid this kind of thing in the past, always so scrupulously careful. I catch a stray thought from Alice, that she has failed us, and I panic.

I want to batter down Alice's mind, to drag it out of her. She has no right to hide this from me, or from any of us. Jasper senses the shift in my emotions immediately. _Get a hold of yourself, boy!_ He moves closer to Alice, angles himself between her and me. Emmett, who has just been getting a whispered earful of how I had snarled and shown Rosalie my teeth, also slips a protective arm around his mate. His thoughts are angry for the first time since all of this began. _Raisin' yer voice to our Rose! Will ye raise yer hand to her as well? _

He keeps it private, but will have his say, cradling Rosalie to his chest, glaring at me in truculent silence.

_Ye __**are**__ selfish. It's a fact. Ye should make whatever pact ye must wi' the devil, take what ye must, and live with it like a man. Ye've no right to be draggin' us through it all like this. And Esme worryin' herself sick like she is. For __**ye**__, first of all! And for Carlisle, and all of us._

I stump up the stairs to my room like a chastened child. I hear Esme move to follow me, see, in their collective vision, Alice's hand on Esme's wrist, the small shake of her head, the ever-so-slight and brief fan that it makes of her short, black hair. Jasper's sudden, unguarded pang of love for her almost makes me stumble on the step.

_Go, _Alice tells me. _Just go. It's all right._

And though I know she meant it as comfort and permission, still, I feel cast out. I rattle around in my room for an hour, trying to shake the feeling, but it just won't go away. It's not the first time.

Blasting my ears with the latest in raucously nihilistic teen music that my iPod can produce helps nothing. I am not of this era, nor it of me. My eye falls on the slim, leather-bound volume stashed between a brace of outdated college chemistry texts in my bookcase. It is my journal. My oldest one, salvaged from among my personal effects by Carlisle when he changed me. He had not given it to me until I had been a vampire for nearly a year. It was too precious to risk me, newborn and wild, tearing into it for the traces of my human scent.

I pull it from its place gingerly. I cannot smell my old self on it any longer. It has been too long. I have conditioned the leather from time to time, so it is still supple, and the stitched binding is still holding strong. Things were made to last in those days, made to pass down to children and children's children. But the ink is fading inexorably. I had not imagined that I would be wanting, much less needing, archival quality.

There is no need to open the pages. I have committed every word to a memory that will outlast the pyramids. My concerns in those days were so youthful, so quaint.

_Father says I am not yet a man. I know why, of course. He and Mother are praying nearly every day for the end of the war. But I will be a man, and soon. I can feel it, waiting for me, just around the bend. Over There ... or somewhere nearer to home? Perhaps it doesn't matter, so long as I make Father and Mother proud. _

Carlisle did not bring me the mementos of my past all at once, but at odd intervals over those first few years. How he kept custody of them in the mean time I have no idea. My parents' wedding photograph, Father's cufflinks, Mother's jewelry box, the blue and white blanket that she had crocheted for me when I was an infant, my baseball glove, my school blazer. The blazer fits me still; the fabric is still holding. I have not worn it in a very long time.

The journal had been a surprise, a birthday present, in fact. But for each subsequent time, he would approach me so diffidently, showing me the outline of his intention in his mind first, in case the article might cause more pain than comfort. I never turned him down, though the gifts were bitter-sweet at best. I saw in his memories how all of this had been denied him in his making. Among all of us, Carlisle is the one who was orphaned. And Alice. Alice was, too.

Jasper's thought interrupts me from downstairs. _Your pacin's making sorry music, Edward. Just go already. Just don't go to __**her**__. _

And so I am shot from my window, like a bolt from a bow. I hit the ground running, the journal still in my hand. Of all the stupid things. To bring this with me, to where I am going. But I am too proud to turn back and then leave again, like an addle-pated boy. I place it, aging calf hide against immortal skin, inside my shirt to keep it from the light rain that is falling. The forest flows backwards around me, my passage leaving a trail of wind.

I cast through the forest, seeking a meal. I am so sick and tired of deer. Fresh spoor of a fox catches my eye and nose, and the creature is doomed. I catch up to it before it even has time to realize that it has become quarry. A quick scoop from the ground and it is in my hands, and I wring its backbone in two. Too much force. Blood is pouring into the abdominal cavity. There will be waste. This is wrong, but it can't be undone. I bite into the belly to salvage as much as I can. There is fur to be dealt with, always fur with the animals, to be razored away and spit out. And then drink. Pungent and musky-hot. Barely a snack. The small heart stutters and is still, I suck, and nothing more comes.

I sit on the forest floor, the dead thing in my lap. Their bodies always appear shrunken, once the blood is gone. I run my fingers through the rapidly cooling pelt. So silken and thick. This creature was healthy. Beautiful. The dark cannot hide from my eyes the color of its fur, a brighter echo of my own hair. The velvet-soft paws are black, the tail tip white, the face sharp and graceful. All of these are intact. Only the underside has been ravaged.

By me. This is what I am. A monster. I touch my journal through my shirt. I should bury it, with the fox. But Carlisle has taught us never to bury our kills, unless failing to do so would risk detection. We always leave the meat for others.

"_We give back unto the world as we may, Edward. Howsoever that we may."_

It's no use. Unless I bury the thing six feet under, a huge and _unnatural_ hole, it will surely be dug up by something - raccoon, skunk, bear - and my journal with it. The thought of the faded pages, soiled and shredded and scattering on the wind, just hurts too much. I leave my journal against my skin, and place the dead fox in the fork of two tree roots.

I should be still thirsty, but all I feel is pain. All I want is peace. My feet move again, toward Isabella's house.


	29. Quasimodo

**Quasimodo**

_"We shall not attempt to give the reader an idea of that tetrahedron nose-that horse-shoe mouth-that small left eye over-shadowed by a red bushy brow, while the right eye disappeared entirely under an enormous wart-of those straggling teeth with breaches here and there like the battlements of a fortress-of that horny lip, over which one of those teeth projected like the tusk of an elephant-of that forked chin-and, above all, of the expression diffused over the whole-that mixture of malice, astonishment, and melancholy. Let the reader, if he can, figure to himself this combination." (p. 62)_

_"The owl goes not into the nest of the lark." (p. 502)_

_Victor Hugo, __The Hunchback of Notre Dame_

_

* * *

_

There are lights on in the Swan house. Bella's father is moving around inside, folding the last of a laundry. I see his daughter's clothing in his hands, as his thoughts drift outward across the small lawn.

… _make a billy goat puke … _

A man in the neighboring county has been killed by a bear. The body, partially eaten, not whole by any means, floats ice-soaked and white in his consciousness, surrounded by the dark woods where it had been dragged. The dogs mill about, whining, their tails between their legs, unable to pick up a scent, no matter how their handlers encourage or exhort.

_Better call Billy tonight. Nowhere near the rez, but still. Doris's alerted all the schools._

Perhaps Emmett and I should look for this bear, when next we hunt. If it is a rogue, it should be easy enough to find. Blood tainted by disease, or an infected wound, stands out even more strongly for us than for the dogs. Usually, like the dogs, we avoid. But a man-eater … ... We will deal with it, when we find it.

Swan is in his daughter's bedroom now, shuffling through notebooks and papers on her desk. He has a complete set of her clothing, down to underclothes, socks and sneakers, already folded in a small cloth satchel.

_She said it was the blue binder. Better bring it all, just in case._

His gaze turns to her bed. It is disheveled and unmade.

_Must've been in a hurry this morning._

The man sets everything down, and carefully makes his daughter's bed. Other images flit through his mind. A small hand, holding a baby tooth in the open palm, one tiny drop of blood drying on the lost root. The scene of today's accident intrudes from one side. The green van came off far the worse, supposedly having struck the red truck's fender at an angle. There had been blood at the scene, but none of it Bella's.

Chief Swan smoothes the coverlet, and finds himself kneeling. Clumsy and unaccustomed, he clasps his hands silently. Blackness overtakes my vision, as he closes his eyes.I can almost feel the weight of his forehead, resting heavily against interlaced fingers.

Pictures of what might have been, of other accidents, other people's children, are pushed aside, only to return. Blood and bone. Red and white. His vehicle's lights. Red and white. Flashing in the rainy dark.

His breathing slows, roughens. Patiently, he waits for the past to relent.

At last he sees his daughter again. On the gurney, but whole.

_Thanks, old man … , _the Chief whispers.

… _for sending your angels to look after my baby girl._

He takes his leave quickly after that. I see in his mind that he is going to the hospital, to spend the night on a cramped chair in Bella's room.

...

And now I have the house to myself.

I'm never going to get another chance like this again.

I enter through the front door, using the spare key shown to me in a flitting thought as Chief Swan locked up behind himself. I wonder, when Carlisle changed me, if he could have imagined what a shameful thing I would become.

The house is dark. Not just because it is nighttime and no lights have been left on. The spaces are narrow, the coloring dull, the window-curtains heavy. There is no parlor, but a cave-like "family room" off to the left of the stairs. I wander in. The furniture is old: a sagging brown couch, a worn coffee table with water marks and heat stains on its wooden top. A glossy flat screen television covers a large portion of the opposite wall. Behind it are built-in shelves that might once have held books. Now they are bare, except for the small portions still exposed on either side of the television. One side is stacked with magazines: _Field and Stream_, _In-Fisherman_, a cumbersome antique volume of _The Fisherman's Digest_. It is the other side that draws me. Square after square, three and a half by five, fading in flimsy paper frames. Bella's school portraits. I examine them one by one.

Kindergarten. Very close to the memory that I had stolen from her father. Hair still wispy, cheeks still round. But the smile is different. The eyes seem to be glancing away, or searching for something. Or apprehensive, perhaps? Perhaps it is just my imagination. I don't know how to read expressions any more.

I count eleven photographs in all, and assume that they show every year except the most recent one.

Third grade is striking: sober, studious, but perhaps content. The small smile does not seem forced or self-conscious.

The photograph that follows is shuttered and closed. What happened between those two?

In seventh grade she started to let her hair grow down past her shoulders. In ninth she tried parting it on the side. I suppose she didn't like it, because in the last photograph, and every time I see her now, it is always parted in the middle.

I leaf through them all again, watch as this child grows up in my hands. Humans change. In a handful more years, she will be a young woman. I think of the woman who had carried her on her hip in the kitchen. I think of Isabella with a child on her hip.

The pictures go back to their places on the shelves. Exactly as I had found them. No one will ever know that I have touched them.

I should leave, but instead I wander back past the stairs to the kitchen. It is tidy and uncluttered. I wonder who does the cooking. The odors of food linger. Pot roast with potatoes and carrots. Some sort of cake and fruit. I can't remember what my mother's kitchen smelled like. Esme's is pristine. I only know that the aromas here, which should be homelike and comforting, only leave me faintly nauseous.

The dining room beyond the kitchen is a still life. Clearly unused. They eat here, in the kitchen. At the hearth itself. With the fading yellow cabinets, and yes, there is Bella's small handprint beneath the sink. I think of where I and my family eat.

I cannot stay here even a moment longer.

I should leave. I have no place in this house, none at all. But the stairs are beckoning. I climb slowly in the dark.

My journal pulls heavily at my shirt, and I tuck the shirt-tails tighter to keep it secure. The stairwell is so devoid of light that even my vampire vision is foiled. I feel like some leviathan surfacing slowly from the deep. The creak of one step under my foot disputes the image, but only for a moment. Bella's scent leads me straight on up to her room.

The outlines of her furniture are so familiar to me: her desk and chair, the low book case lining one wall, her bed, of course, and the rocking chair, my favorite perch. I take my place there, now, strange master of all I survey. Without her restless form swimming fitfully under the quilts, my attention is free to roam. There are drawings taped on the wall, of horses: grazing in a paddock, looking out from stall windows. I leave the chair to examine them. Each of the horses has a name penciled in slow cursive underneath: _Colonel Sandy, Double Stuff, Boss Mare, _and_ Peaches._ Under this last is written, _My Best Friend. I miss you. July 18, 2001._

I trace the images with my fingertips. All are carefully done, all the colors kept within the lines. The eyes are large and luminous, even in crayon, even in the dark.

_Isabella. _

"Just Bella," she said, all that endless first day. But I like _Isabella_ better.

It is so strange to be able to move about freely in this room. A scrap of knitting on the bedside table catches my eye. Not knitting, but crochet, I see, as I pick it up to examine it. I wonder what it was going to be. It is done in a spiral pattern, with pastel colors of the rainbow. For now, it seems to just be collecting dust. I place it back, exactly as I found it.

I am never going to get another chance like this again. To learn her secrets.

I walk around her bed, and crouch down between it and her book case. What fills her head, her heart, her soul? I will find out.

_Little Pig, Big Trouble._

_Goodnight Moon._

_Stella Luna._

I leaf through them, and see that these are all children's books. Why are they here? According to everything I have been able to eavesdrop from her classmates and teachers at school, she did not grow up in this house at all. So why are these books here?

_The Kissing Hand. _This one is inscribed. _For Bella, on your first day of school. With love, Gran._ I read it slowly, from cover to cover. My chest feels heavy, or perhaps it is just the weight of my journal, crimped against me as I sit here, squeezed awkwardly between Bella's bed and books. I take it out, and lay it on top of the bookcase. It helps a little. Perhaps.

There is more.

Fairy tales, with gorgeous, intricate, hypnotically beautiful illustrations by an artist named Craft.

_Twelve Dancing Princesses._

_Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave._

_East of the Sun, West of the Moon._ This one, too, is inscribed: _Dream deep, my little one. Gran._

Is this why her sleep is so often restless?

I pore through them all. Right beside the myths, is science. The books are surprisingly old. Stamps on the back show that they had once belonged to the Calvin S. Smith Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. I suppose she, or a parent, bought them at a library book sale. I can hardly imagine Bella stealing books, or even neglecting to return them.

Quaint and out of date though they are, the information they contain is still serviceable.

_ABCs of Chemistry._

_One, Two, Three, Infinity._

_The Lives of a Cell._

_The Immense Journey._

I see her.

I see her.

Quiet. Intelligent. Curious.

Lover of old things. And beauty. And thought.

She is like me.

She is like me.

It is not possible for me to feel tired, and yet, that is what I feel. I want to stand up. But upon standing, I realize that I want to lie down. There is her bed, right before me. Her scent, like the breath of heaven, all around me. Her father made the bed. I can re-make it before I leave. Everything will be as I found it. Everything.

I sink down. The mattress, the quilts, the pillow. Soft: as she must be, being human. And fragrant, oh, fragrant: as she is, as I most certainly know that she is. Her scent, everywhere. I want to stay. Never leave.

This is dangerous, terribly dangerous, but I cannot bring myself to care. She is not here. No one is here except for me, and so I will have what I long for, the only way that I can without murdering her.

I turn my face into her pillow, and breathe. Just breathe. Drink in her scent. It is almost like drinking her blood. Almost. So close. My mouth opens, to taste that fragrance as I draw it in over my tongue.

I will not bite.

I will not bite.

No shredded fabric. No snowfall of feathers. No.

I gulp down the venom as it gouts and flows, all bitter and hot. I don't even know if it would leave a stain, but I will take no chances.

Hurts … God in heaven, this hurts; but I cannot stop. I want, oh, I want. Her scent. Her blood. The pain is like an arrow, a red arrow snaking into me through my mouth, all the way down to my most private parts. The pillow is not her, but I wrap it in my arms desperately. Soft, soft. Sweet scent of her. I will never get enough, not in this life or any other.

My fingers scrape against something underneath the pillow. I have just enough curiosity to search for it and pull it out. I roll onto my back and stare at the thing in my hand. Of course I recognize it. I wrote it and folded it. Placed it in the brown paper bag with the medicine. She has kept this under her pillow all these days? Keeps it here still. Whispers my name in the dark.

And what of hers? Shreds of white and green and red, lost to ice wind and black water. It is no more than fitting. No more than truth. No more, nor less than what I am. But it hurts.

My fist can push my cry back down my throat, but I cannot stop myself from writhing and rolling on her bed. Her quilts tangle and wind themselves around me. Like Iphegenia at Aulis. Like Agamemnon at his bath. I am pierced and hacked through and through. And still all I want is to drown myself in the scent of this girl. My face burrows into her pillow again. It is soft and fragrant and all I can imagine is her neck. Sweet, tender. The pulse right there. I know what it's like. I have done this. Cold mouth upon hot skin.

The images blossom, like wine-dark poppies. Fantasies born in that first scent of her, all over again.

_The small, unfamiliar body. Pinned on the ground beneath me, or against a tree, or crushed to my own chest by the vise wrap of my arms. Her scent filling me, her struggle inciting me. The tender, tender flesh shearing open as I bite down. The blood, so warm and sweet, filling my mouth in luscious pulses. So good, so good, so good._

Pain, and joy, and this _thing_ between my legs spikes hard against the mattress.

God, _no!_

But it is there, and won't go away. Memories flood me. Sharp and vivid, indelible and eternal, as only a vampire's memory can be. The creatures that I hunted. Their fascination with terror and pain. Their thoughts as they stimulated themselves in the midst of the most depraved of acts. I thought I would rid the world of such thoughts. Such acts.

Nothing - not all the aching, siren scents I had endured until then, certainly not the unwashed sweat of the beast at my feet, and least of all anything that Carlisle had told me - nothing in all my young life had prepared me for that first bite, that first taste, of _human_ blood. Not even the retching horror I had felt at the beast's thoughts could undo the ecstasy of that _taste_. I drained him to the last drop. And found myself in the same state that _he_ had been when I tracked him down, there in that basement, reliving in his mind the piteous deaths he had inflicted.

My life as an avenging demon. It was not what I thought it would be. I thought I would rid the world of such thoughts. Such acts. I only drank them in. The intoxication of their blood lured and goaded, whispered to me of justice and right, slicked over and hid from me the poison that it carried inside. Until all I wanted was more. Until, in the end, I could carry no more.

And here I lie on Bella's bed. Wanting. Wanting. _Her_ blood is not poisonous. Every article in this room testifies to her pure and innocent thoughts. No wonder her blood smells so sweet. No wonder I want it so badly. More than I have ever wanted anything, ever. And yet, what have I done? Rutting to the thought of her bleeding out into my mouth. I have despoiled this room of hers, her bedclothes, the very thoughts in the air. I have polluted it all.

The ugly creature will not lie down. It is impervious to my panic and shame. It is all I can do not to crash out through Bella's window with her quilts still binding me. Extricating myself without ripping anything takes so _long._ And still my body refuses to be tamed.

Put everything back. Everything back exactly as it was. Exactly in its place. Even the pitiful folded missive. Under the pillow. There.

If there is a God, let him please come. Let his hand pass over this room and take away my stain. Take it all away. Let it be clean again for her. As though I had never been.

I leave through the window, and run, aching arrow of stone still lodged in the joint of my thighs.

* * *

_A/N: All of the books on Bella's shelf can be found at Amazon. The fairy tales illustrated by Kuniko Y. Craft are exquisite. East o' the Sun and West 'o the Moon, also exquisite, is illustrated by P.J. Lynch._

_Iphegenia at Aulis, and Agamemnon at his bath: these are vignettes from Greek tragedies written about the Trojan War that would be familiar to our scholar Edward. For the curious, I have posted the details here: http(colon double slash)miaokuancha(dot)livejournal(dot)com_


	30. Grendel

_A/N: The next chapter is not even a single word on the page. And yet, this is ready now. I'm not going to withhold. With love to alphas, betas, omegas and all of you readers who keep blowing me away with your amazing reviews._

**

* * *

**

**Grendel**

Hie dygel lond warigeath,

_**They a darksome land ward,**_

Wulf-hleothu, windige naessas

_**Wolf-cliff and windy nesses. **_

Frecne fen-gelad thaer fyrgen-stream

_**Frightful fen-glades where mountain-stream**_

Under nessa genipu nither gewiteth

_**Under nesses' mist all nether goeth**_

Flod under foldan, nis thaet feor hoenen

_**A flood under earth, 'tis not far hence**_

Mil-gemearces, thaet se mere standeth

_**By miles marked, that grey sea stands**_

Ofer thaem hongiath, hrinde bearwas

_**Over-hung in rimy bowers, **_

Wudu wyrtum fæst, wæter oferhelmath

_**whose wood, rooted fast, the water overhelms.**_

Thær mæg nihta gehwæm, nithwundor seon,

_**There, by nightfall, nixed wonder seen **_

fyr on flode. No thæs frod loofah

**- **_**fire on flood. Nor none there lives **_

gumena bearna, thæt thone grund wite;

_**of human born, that those grottos wit;**_

theah the hæthstapa hundum geswenced,

_**Though the heath-stepper of hounds be chased,**_

heorot hornum trum, holtwudu sece,

_**hart of branch horns crowned, hold-wood seeking, **_

feorran geflymed, ær he feorh seleth,

_**far field fleeing, he sells sweet life**_

aldor on ofre, ær he in wille

_**on that high edge, ere he willing in**_

hafelan hydan. Nis thæt heoru stow!

_**the surf his head to hide. No haven is that below!**_

**Beowulf****, Lines 1357 - 1372**

_**

* * *

**_

_He comes to us, trailing the taste of the higher waters. It is the taste of absence. Absence of salt. Absence of savor. He trails hunger and thirst as well. Cold this one is, but our realm is colder, and the last rays of heat that he carried from above desert him swiftly as he descends._

_This creature is blind. Mass and magnetism, temperature and current, the bioelectric spark, are undecipherable to him. Sightless in the sea of eternal night, he gropes at the cliffs, where the edge of the continent shears down. Down and down and down. All the way to the abyssal plain._

_He carries no light in his body, nothing to lead food or mate to his mouth. And so, though his hunger and thirst shimmer around him, they cannot be filled. Instead, here under the weight of ocean, where the dense, dark water holds even the softest body together, here he makes war upon the rocks._

_He is powerful, breaking and smashing the ancient cliff face, tumbling it down around him._

_Every block and shard falls slowly, barely heavier than the flood that holds us. He labors in vain, until, in the end, he must surrender. Defeated by the implacable god, he attends to himself at last. _

_In silence and pain, he releases his milt to the water._

_We blink our phosphor code, and pulse forward to seek and feed. The slick ribbons blink white and gone, white and gone, suspended in the black, but taste only of poison and things long dead. There is no nourishment here, no quickening, even if one with roe lay near._

_Bubbles of air rise from the holes in his face, and he draws in water in their stead. There is no feeding here. He is as hard as the stones he set free. Harder, for they yielded to him. Now he is as heavy, too, and sinks slowly, as the air motes shudder upward._

_**Edward! Edward!**_

_A silent call._

_**I know you're here! But it's too deep. Too dark. I can't SEE!**_

_There is panic in that word._

_**You have to help me! Find me! Find us!**_

_Other voices join._

_**Edward! Come back to us. Come back.**_

_**We'll leave her be, if she means all that to ye. Carlisle reckons he can make her out to be tetched if she says anything.**_

_**You can't stay here forever, son. 'Tis bootless. I tried.**_

_The first voice keens again._

_**Edward, where are you? It's too big, and everything is just black. Edward!**_

_They cast about in the middle water, guideless and afraid._

_**If he's dead, she would have seen it, surely … Edward, you prick, don't you care about anyone except yourself? You're killing Esme, and Alice, too.**_

_Unfelt and unknown, the great current carries them, just as it carried him._

_**Alice! Here! I feel him. Follow me.**_

_They come. A chain of sea stars, linked arm to arm. The stone people, seeking their lost. He moves toward them, now, at last. We follow, too, in a cloud. Our cold fire shows him, pale ghost, blinking in the deep._

_**What's that light?**_

_**It's him! It's him!**_

_**What's that … stuff …?**_

_They swim too swiftly. We must flee, for their merest touch will rip us apart. They surround their own in the dark, voices an unintelligible chorus. The water around them churns, sending its waves outward. _

_In the end, they return, together, to their sky._

_

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_A map: http (colon double slash) www (dot) seasky (dot) org/deep-sea/ocean-layers (dot) html

Bioluminescent creatures of the deep:

jelly fish: http (colon double slash) nationalzoo (dot) si (dot) edu/Animals/Invertebrates/Facts/cnidarians/images/cover_bioluminescent (dot) jpg

squid: http (colon double slash) www (dot) youtube(dot) com/watch?v=SfNBLR72W7g

more: http (colon double slash) 29 (dot) media (dot) tumblr (dot) com/tumblr_koe7pzDDjl1qzeqzxo1_400 (dot) jpg


	31. Ithaka

**Ithaka**

I had a bad day. I shouldn't say that. My Dad came to stay with me at the hospital last night. When the nurse woke me up in the dark for neurochecks and vitals, there he was, sprawled in the recliner chair that wouldn't quite recline right. He was awake almost as soon as I was – up and out of the chair, grilling the nurse on every measurement she took. When she left, he asked me, too.

"You doin' okay, Bells?"

"I'm fine, Dad, really."

He ran his hand through his hair, then shoved both hands in his pockets. "No bad dreams or anything?"

"No."

"Okay. Well … it's normal if you do. Just want you to know that."

"I'm okay."

"Yeah. Well, better let you get some sleep." And his hand came out of his pocket to almost but not quite touch my face, my shoulder. "Carlisle'll be discharging you in a few more hours. I got all your stuff right here."

"Thanks, Dad."

He got back on the chair. It wasn't even big enough for him, let alone me, too. I remembered all the times Mom had let me get on the chair with her. The I.V. line I could have managed. But not my long arms and long legs that I have now. I went back and lay down on the bed, wondering why I wanted so badly to be held. It was probably Edward's fault. Holding me to him like that. And then letting me go.

In school, everybody mobbed me. Tyler was still in the hospital, so I got all the attention. Mike was doing his Igor impression, complete with clawed hands raised to the sky. "She's ali-i-ve!" I know he wasn't trying to be obnoxious. It's just his way of showing that he cares. But it still got old after the third time. And embarrassing. I wanted to be somewhere else, but I honestly can't say _where_. Not home, not even back in Phoenix – well, of course not back in Phoenix, my Mom doesn't live there any more. No place felt right. I had a bad day.

And then there was Edward. He was completely ignoring me: in the cafeteria, in Biology. Like I was invisible to him. Like I didn't even exist. Why should today be different from any other?

I know he has a secret. I can figure out that he'd rather no one even connect him with the van thing at all. I made sure to not breathe his name the whole day. I can keep quiet. I know how. But it still bothered me. I kept telling myself not to be stupid. I mean, what am I expecting, some kind of a secret handshake or something? It's stupid. But I still had a bad day.

The house is empty and dark when I get home. Dad's going to be working late these couple of nights. A lot of paper work, he said. I know what it's about. There was an announcement over the PA during advisory. Stay out of the woods.

My room is dark enough that the nightlight is flickering on and off, on and off. At three in the afternoon. That's Forks weather. I flop down on my back crosswise on my bed, with my legs hanging over the side. I see my Dad made it for me last night. That makes my heart hurt for some reason.

I should do my homework, but I can't even think about it. I just turn over and crawl straight and put my face in my pillow. Maybe this is some kind of PTSD that I'm feeling. Dr. Cullen had given me a little handout about it before I left. His face is so kind. And strangely sad. I wonder why. He squeezed my hand and told me to eat nutritious food and don't stay up late.

My pillow smells nice. It smells like Edward, actually. It's my imagination, I know. Thinking about his foster father made me think about him. I inhale deeply anyway. Pretending. Wishing.

It really, really _does_ smell like him. Really. I pass my hand under it. His "coin" is still there.

And my pillow smells like him.

I feel like an electric bolt has shot through me. He's been _in my room!_

_Somebody's been sleeping in __**my**__ bed, and she's still __**in**__ it!_

I hang over the side of my bed to look underneath. Only dust bunnies.

This is crazy. I crush my quilt to my face. I'm back in the hospital room with his chest an inch from my nose. _Incense._ Is it sandalwood? No. Something different. _Something transcendent and warm, even though the cold of outside is radiating onto me from his clothing._ My whole bed smells like Edward.

Heart pounding, I jump up and burst into the closet. Darkness, and my clothes, and my suitcases. Faint, faint, ever so faint … maybe I'm imagining it. But I know I'm not. I sniff at the hem of my sweater. _He's been here._

My thighs feel like water. I have to sit down. Grandma's rocking chair holds me. The wooden rungs smell faintly of him, too.

Has he been _stalking_ me? The thought makes me nauseous. I don't want him to be that kind of weird. Super powers are okay. Leaving me medicine on my porch is okay. Saving me from a blood mess end … I'm sure he could get into my room no problem. Through the window. Down the chimney. No, that would leave soot everywhere.

What does he _want_ from me?

_What does he **want**?_

There is a book on top of my bookcase that doesn't belong.

I go over to pick it up. My hands are shaking, hard.

It's a journal, bound in leather. I almost can't breathe.

I bring it up to my face. It smells old. It smells like him. Just like him.

It's his journal. His.

He came to my house last night when no one was here.

Not to take.

To give.

He left his journal here.

In my room.

On my bookcase.

For me.

The secret handshake.

I forgive him. I forgive everything. My heart is thumping, thumping, thumping against his journal through my shirt as I sit down again on my bed. My bed that smells like him, now. His days and his thoughts are in my hands.

I lie down, with it under my cheek. The leather is soft and old, almost like an antique. Where did he get it? Did someone give it to him? It's special. I know it's special. And he left it here for me.

I'm not going to tear into it right away. That would be so greedy. So crass.

_One must observe the proper rites. _The Fox said that. To the Little Prince. I lost that book. We moved so many times. But I still remember what it said.

I keep Edward's journal safe under my cheek. Until I'm used to it. Until it's used to me.

* * *

I have watched Bella die a thousand times. In Alice's visions. In Rosalie's thoughts … and Emmett's, and Jasper's, too. In fire. By hemorrhage. Between a red truck and a green van. But most of all, worst of all, at my own hands, in my arms, under my mouth. I shiver with grief and sorrow. And, God help me, the _thirst_.

I wonder if that is why we still have to have this meeting, even though my family has already capitulated to me.

Last night, as they were drawing me back up from the water. As I bent over on hands and knees, hacking the wild sea up from my lungs. It will take a long while for me to dry out completely. I have a slight wheeze now, and faint, wet crackles when I breathe. Even to human ears, I sound like I have a chest cold. It cannot harm me, but it makes me remember what I had forgotten – the sensation of drowning in my own fluids.

"I guess nobody'll believe you did anything superhuman, now," Jasper had said, as he put a hand on my back, and calmed the terror out of my breaths.

And they gave in. I heard it in all their heads. Surrendered to my obsession with the Swan girl.

_But I am holding a secret._ As I coughed up the frigid brine, another thing rose with it. My journal: laid on top of the bookshelf beside Bella's bed. Thin, five inches by seven, sepia-brown leather, left at a careless angle across the cream-painted wood.

Everyone was of course anxious to get me home. Rosalie was reminding me that we had "forty-five minutes before we have to be reasonably dry and walking in the door at school." There was no time to do anything but comply.

I should have run back to fetch the thing during lunch. What would it have mattered if Alice had "seen" my errand? At least _Bella_ would never see the journal, never suspect that anyone had invaded her room. And so what if no one is allowed to leave school without a pass, now? Mrs. Cope adores me. She would have let me go. Emmett would laugh at me, Carlisle would shake his head, but _Bella_ would never know, and so she would be safe – from my family, at least …

I should have. I _could_ have. But I didn't. I didn't.

And now it's too late.

It's past three in the afternoon as we all file in to the dining room. There was no flirting with speed limits today. Nothing to draw attention.

_Even in that rattle-trap truck of hers, Bella is certainly at home by now, too._

What does she do after school? Does she fix herself a snack? Watch television? The chances of her doing her homework any place but her room are slim. I've seen her desk there, stacked with papers and books.

For all I know, she's in her room _right now_. How long will it take her to notice the _one_ out of place thing?

I am doomed. _She_ is doomed.

As I have been doing all day, I concentrate on whatever claptrap I can think of, whatever it takes to _not_ think, _not_ plan, _not_ feel _anything_, lest this horrible secret be discovered by my psychic sister, who sees every future that spins out from my thoughts. Or my dear brother who even now is wondering if there isn't something more to my agitation than the "general train wreck" that I have made of everything. For if my family realizes that Bella has something of mine in her hands, something that doesn't _belong_ – not to this time, not to this place – a _physical_ _proof _of how not normal I am … how not normal _we_ are … won't even Esme bow to the necessity of … damage control?

If I can just keep this from them, somehow, I'll find a way to take care of it – steal it back, something … somehow. If she doesn't have it in her hands she has no _proof._ She's a quiet girl. She won't talk. She'll just feel puzzled. And sad.

But at least she will _live_ to feel those things.

Carlisle is clearing his throat. He sees that my mind is wandering. Everyone is staring at me, as we all take our seats so dutifully, around a dining room table that is never used for dining.

"A house divided cannot stand," Carlisle says. "We must either trust each other, or go our separate ways."

Rosalie gasps as if she were still human. Emmett's hand instantly tightens around hers, and I hear his emphatic thought.

_Y'ain't gonna lose __**me**__, Rose. Not never. Less'n you pitch me out on my ear._

Jasper, too, moves to contain and comfort her, but the first stab of her panic still passes through him and into all of us.

Perhaps my mind is exhausted by the endless days and nights of temptation that I have created by returning. Perhaps I am so tasked with concealing the journal from Alice and Jasper, that I have no power to do anything else. Whatever the reason, every thought, every image in the minds of each of my family members floods into me at once: surrounding, swirling, overwhelming.

Esme is transported back to 1927 and Fire Island. My silences. My absences. Just like now. Just like now. Until one grey morning I did not return. She is clinging to Carlisle, but her golden eyes are on me. _Not again. Please, Edward, no._

Jasper's mind is like a war room, cataloguing alliances and hostilities, and how they might change if we truly did scatter. Would the Volturi leave us alone? Or would they move in to pick us off, one by one – for recruitment or destruction. He tries to focus on that, on whether we might individually find refuge in other covens – Denali, Brazil – and two faces come to his mind. Peter and Charlotte. He misses them. And with that thought, he - and all of us with him - are ambushed by the plangent ghost of his eighty-five years of human blood. We _thirst._

Alice cannot stop the visions that come on the heels of that memory. She sees Jasper on his own. Gone from her, in an apartment with a woman wrapped around him. He is giving this stranger her heart's desire, or at least her body's desire. And – unknowing until it is far too late – she gives him his.

Carlisle takes in the absolutely motionless tableau before him - the rigid faces, the swirl of emotions, the burn of the pit that waits beneath all of our feet - and senses that something has gone very wrong. He meant for his words to bring us together, but instead we are scattering like birds. _What have I done? What have I said? And how do I bring them back?_

I see myself in his memory. Our parish church, pressed into service as a hospital in the worst days, when people were sickening by the thousands. My sweat-soaked sheets and wracking cough. And within that memory another, like the images of mirrors within mirrors. My mother's moist, white hand gripping his wrist. Her eyes pleading when her voice failed.

He bends, as though to kiss me …

His memories of Esme, and Rosalie, and Emmett flash in quick succession.

_Was I wrong? Was I doing __**my**__ work and not Thine? Was it truly Thy will that each of these should perish? Was I, not saving them for a higher purpose, but instead sinfully wresting them from Thy eternal embrace?_

_And is this, now, Thy judgment for my pride? For believing that I could make something new under the sun? Something good from what we are?_

All of his years before Chicago fill his spacious mind. Decades, centuries, of solitary wandering. Ministering wherever he might; learning, always learning. And always anonymous and alone. A mirror image future stretches out in front of him, and he closes his eyes.

_Yet surely it cannot come to this? Surely we are not so easily sundered. She's just a girl, a harmless and innocent girl._

Memories of my own flood me. The years after Carlisle turned me. I hated and feared what I had become, but I loved him. How could I not? He saw me, not as a demon, but as an angel burned with holy fire. Even if I could not share his faith in God and salvation, his devotion - to me, to all of us - he never stinted, never failed to believe that our choices mattered. I see it in his face right now, even as he suffers and doubts, afraid of what will happen in this house today.

_I'd help you. I'd help you._ No judgments, just whatever it takes.

Alice and Jasper and Emmett and Rosalie: surrounding me at school, and afterwards. Keeping me safe. Keeping _her_ safe, for all that. They didn't leave me to the sea. They searched until they found me.

_A house divided cannot stand._

Could she really split us apart? Yes. But not her. _I_. If I continue as I have been. Ungrateful as I have been. Shunning my family. Sneaking out of the house every night. Don't ask, don't tell. Alice hiding from me. Hiding what she sees of _me_ from the rest of _them_. But all of the hiding hasn't stopped the private thoughts they all have. Every dawn when I return, they _smell_ where I have been. They worry. They judge.

And then there is Jasper, my keeper, drawn tight as a piano wire tuned too far.

Even in a human family, something like this cannot go on. It's not just the secrets, not just the lies - of omission or commission. It's the turning away from each other. The silences and the absences and the hidden thoughts. It is these things, the _hoarding _of private skeletons, that will break us apart.

I imagine us all, scattered, like leaves upon the wind. Reverting back – for eternity is such a very long time – to our original nature. All except Carlisle.

I can't. I can't.

And so I sell Isabella down the river.

"She has my journal."

"_What?_"

"My journal. She has it." And then I tell them everything.

* * *

My nightlight is shining steady now. It's not night yet, but dark enough that the sensor is committed to "lights on". Edward's journal is all soft and velvety-worn under my cheek. It's whispering in my ear.

"Open me."

And so I do.

The nightlight is not enough to read by, but just for the first page, I do.

.

Ithaka

_When you set your sail for Ithaka,_

_wish your journey long,_

_with Turnings (many turnings) and Knowings (many knowings)_

_along the way._

_The Laistrygonas and the Kyklopas,_

_angry Poseidon - do not fear these, my son._

_You will never find such bars upon your path,_

_so long as your thoughts do not cast off their wings,_

_so long as body and breath receive the sacred passion._

_Not the Laistrygonas, not the Kyklopas,_

_nor fierce Poseidon shall you meet,_

_unless you carry them within your soul,_

_unless your soul should raise them up before you._

_Wish your journey long._

_May they be many, those magic summer morns,_

_with pleasure and with joy_

_that you enter harbors seen for the very first time._

_Stop there, at Phoenician emporia._

_Provision yourself with their finest goods,_

_corals and pearls, ambers and ebonies,_

_and every exquisite perfume -_

_yes, every lush fragrance you can find;_

_and to the Egyptian polises also you must go,_

_to learn and glean from the cultured ones._

_Bear Ithaka ever in your thoughts._

_To arrive there is your final shore._

_But do not hurry the voyage thither._

_Better to wander for many a year,_

_and when, white head, you cast your anchor last,_

_rich with all you have gained upon the way,_

_do not expect Ithaka to offer you wealth._

_For it is Ithaka who has given you your journey._

_Without her you would not have set out upon the wave._

_Nothing more has she got to give you, now._

_And if you find her threadbare, Ithaka has not deceived you._

_Wise as you will have become, rich in Turning and in Knowing,_

_… you will understand (by journey's end) what these Ithakas mean._

_._

_~ If Mr. Kavaphes will forgive me such a translation,_

_and if my son will forgive me such sentiment ~_

.

_To my dearest Edward_

_~ from Mother_

_Christmas, 1917_

_._

It's all in fountain pen … delicate and faded and thin.

1917? Did I read that right? I turn on the light to read it again.

_Christmas, 1917_

There's a bookplate on the inside of the cover. It looks like a cross-section of a fossil nautilus, an umber woodcut on yellowing paper, with a simple border at the edge. In the space under the shell is a name in different handwriting.

_Edward Anthony Masen_

I almost think it's Edward's handwriting – but this Edward slants upward just a little bit.

And 1917.

_Not_ Edward's journal. His grandfather's, then. But no, 1917 … I count backward on my fingers through the decades, trying to guess how old each parent might be before they had children. 1917 would be a _great_-grandfather. Maybe even great-great.

Was this long-ago person Edward's namesake?

_System kids,_ my Dad said. It's not a happy life. Especially if you're different. The kids at school say that Dr. Cullen _collects_ different.

_All of them have problems. They were the ones nobody wanted._

Even though they are each so beautiful.

Gossip still turns to them, when people are bored.

_When the coaches first saw Emmett they were all hot to have him join the football team, or wrestling; but he can't, because he has a _(air quotes) _**condition**__._

Mike was saying it was sickle-cell anemia. Tyler corrected him, because he would know. Not sickle-cell. Hemophilia. Emmett could bleed to death if he ever got tackled.

Alice has epilepsy.

_Sometimes she just zones out, right in the middle of class, and the teachers don't even yell at her._

Jasper has a hole in his heart.

_That's why Dr. Cullen adopted all of them. 'Cause they all have __**problems**__._

_So what's Rosalie got?_

_I don't know, a broom handle up her butt?_

I imagine Edward as an odd little boy – too strong, too quick. I imaging him being passed from family to family like a hot potato, until finally Dr. Cullen took him in. I imagine the journal wrapped and tucked into his swaddling clothes by … someone. Or maybe he grabbed it from the trunk in his grandmother's attic, where he was hiding when CPS came for him. I imagine him reading it with a faltering flashlight under the covers at the state home, trying to find himself in an ancestor he never knew.

And now it's my turn. The poem swirls around in my head. From a mother to a son. I wonder if Edward ever knew his mother. Or is this poem – from another mother to another son – all that he has?

_For it is Ithaka who has given you your journey._

Who can follow a road on water? It's always changing, moving; you can never quite see it for sure.

_… you will understand (by journey's end) what these Ithakas mean._

I close the journal again, and put it back under my cheek. I can't believe that Edward left this water road for me, to follow where he walked and searched. But he did. And I will.

* * *

_A/N: This chapter owes literary debt to some of the best stories I have ever read:_

_(1) Fire Island and Edward's departure in 1927: please read belladonnacullen's The Newborn. www . fanfiction . net/s/5367016/1/The_Newborn As far as I'm concerned her version of Tanya and Edward's history, as well as his hegira away from the family in the late 20's, is canon better than canon._

_(2) Jasper going back to his bad-ass ways: the image (slightly modified) comes to me from Chicklette's Fighter. www. fanfiction __. net/s/5514944/1/Fighter That story really got under my skin. I have a feeling more reference to the themes it raised may be coming in future chapters ..._

___(3) Carlisle's concept of Edward (or vampires in general) as angels burning with holy fire: holy hannah that comes from the amazing mind of Edward A. Masen in her My Lost Youth  www . fanfiction . net/s/4855866/1/My_Lost_Youth A story whose beauty and poetic insight moves me to tears on a regular basis._

___(4) Lastly, I have always felt very strongly that the story of the Little Prince has so many connection points with Edward and Bella. I had conceived tying it in almost from the start of when I was blocking out my chapters. Then I read halojones' Last Rites www . fanfiction . net/s/5225668/1/Last_Rites and although I was thrilled to see The Little Prince worked in so beautifully to her story, I felt a little sad, too, since, how can I use it now that she has? And yet, the Fox insisted on speaking to Bella, and so I have allowed it here, with a bow to halo's wonderful story._

___P.S. The poem, Ithaka, by Constantine P. Cavafy was probably first written in 1894, revised in 1910, and first published in its original language of Greek, in Alexandria, in 1911. The earliest published English translation was in 1924. I am supposing Elizabeth Mason to have been a somewhat scholarly woman, perhaps with a spinster classmate who traveled to the Agaean / Near East, and may have sent her a copy of the Greek poem collection. Which she has translated here for her son ... Elizabeth preserves the Greek spellings of the poet's name, as well as mythological creatures such as the Cyclopes, and Laistrygonians._

___Edward's bookplate is here: http(colon double slash)www(dot)madlion(dot)co(dot)uk/images/Fossil(dot)jpg_


	32. The Ghost in the Wishing Well

_What has gone before:_

_Edward has accidentally left his journal in Bella's room. His family knows._

**

* * *

**

**The Ghost in the Wishing Well**

I stand in the woods behind Bella's house. Silence surrounds me. It always does. Silence follows all of us, wherever we go, whenever we are away from the noises of humans.

The wild things know us.

"_Bring it back, Edward. Just bring it _**back**_**.**__"_

Carlisle's eyes were so urgent. He doesn't wish her harm any more than I do.

The place is completely dark, save for the nightlight that shines from her bedroom. Cold air has come down from the mountains, and a light snow is falling. My chest feels swollen from inside, and I ache through and through.

I scale the wall to her window without a sound.

Where _**is**_ it?

"_She never tells," Alice insists. "Never. I don't see a single future in which she tells on us."_

"_That could change in an instant. Any instant at all." It's Rosalie who says it, but Jasper is thinking it. Alice gasps as his half-formed thoughts translate into visions of him luring Bella into the woods. It is too easy. He finds her already outside, wandering restlessly in the yard at dusk. When she sees him she approaches him. She wants something. A question. An answer. He uses it against her, twists her puzzlement and longing into … something else. I am so appalled that I cannot even breathe, let alone speak._

The house is filled with human sounds: old masonry settling, father's and daughter's heartbeats and breathing, slightly off key and off tempo from each other, limbs moving and shifting under bedclothes, a mattress creaking. I lever Bella's window open and enter, as I have done so many times now. The curtains brush me as I pass between them. I close the window quickly so as not to wake her with the cold from outside.

"_How could you?" Alice throws herself on Jasper, and it is only the complete bewilderment in his mind that stops me from doing the same, and ripping his head from his shoulders. He truly has no idea of the future that has sprung from his fears. "How COULD you?" Her sobbed accusation rings with grief and hurt. It is not a stranger that Alice sees entangled with Jasper, now. It is Bella._

"_What did I do?" Jasper whispers, tensed in defense against her, and against me. Alice takes his head in her hands and puts her mouth to his ear. I stare at Alice's black hair, brushing against Jasper's blond, as she tells him what he does to protect our family._

_It should not be possible for our kind to blanch, but I swear that Jasper does._

"_She fights you. To the end. In the end you have to just kill her. And she's __**scared**__."_

_Scared is barely the half of it. Caught in Alice's vision, Jasper feels, and I see, Bella's unease, changing to desperate panic, as she scrabbles against the slick, inexorable slope of his gift._

_He intends it as mercy, but for Bella it is not. She shies away from what he offers, and so she must be forced, until her body – her very feelings – are no longer hers. Her scream is barely a whimper, tainted by a wantonness she is powerless not to feel, as his gift and his arms wrap her to him._

_Her bones break. Her blood is taken. He cannot help it. Even as a spectator to this mere figment, I, too, flame with thirst._

_Bella's body is desecrated, to imitate the feeding of the rogue bear._

_My chair is a shambles on the floor. Her skull, God! Her skull! Blood-matted hair against the pine needle litter ... I stand with my own arms wrapped tight around myself, every muscle locked. __**This has not happened.**__ It __**has not**__ happened._

_Though Alice has barely breathed the words into Jasper's ear, of course everyone has __**heard**__. Rosalie sits like a stone, gripping Emmett's hand so hard that he is wincing._

_Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit, is all that she can think. And then at me: It just keeps going from bad to worse, doesn't it, Edward? Do you still think you were right to save her from that damned van? From __**me**__?_

_Esme's face is in her hands. "Carlisle, you can't allow this, you __**can't**__!"_

"_I would never – " Jasper protests. But he and I both know that that is not entirely true._

_Alice's arms are around his neck, and she is soothing him, though her whole body trembles from what she has seen and told. "You won't now. You won't. It's past. It's over."_

"_Bring it back, Edward," Carlisle says. "Just bring it _**back**_**.**__"_

I cast my eyes around the room. I see only Bella's things. Her homework is untidy on her desk. I see that her lab report for Biology is not complete. I dread to imagine why. How much has she read? _Am I too late?_

Moving around in her room like this is _dangerous_. I am silent, of course, but I cannot stop my passage from moving the air. And she is such a fitful sleeper.

Where _is_ it? Where has she hidden it? I draw as close to her bed and bookcase as I dare, scan everything twice, just to be sure. Nothing.

Damn her!

No. That's not what I want at all.

Bella stirs, and I freeze in place. I should crouch, get below her line of sight from the bed, but I am in the wrong place for that. There is not enough room here, between her bookcase and where she lies.

She does not wake, and I wonder, is it perhaps under her pillow? With the medicine recipe. Parents are able to exchange quarters for baby teeth under pillows and sleeping heads. I should be able to do this ….

It is sometimes hard to know one's feelings when the body does not function as before. But I am fairly sure that if my heart could move at all, it would be pounding right now. Bella's scent is ever-present, of course. But this is more. This is worse.

I am terrified of waking her. And yet ...

It is absolutely imperative that I recover my journal. And yet … and yet …

The utter stillness in my chest is eerie, horrifying, unnatural. It is hurtful, in a way that I can neither describe nor properly comprehend.

All of my reverie is cut short by her sigh, as she turns to her other side. This is better. Her back is to me. The chance is mine. I reach to slip my hand under her pillow. Her hair spilled across it is clean and fragrant; the back of her head is whole. I stare, staked where I stand.

The pitiful crushed thing, left lying on its side, dead in the woods. Bitten open, bitten _apart_. My whole body wants to just curl itself around that form. To put back the blood, knit up the bones, to make her whole again, alive again, _innocent_ again.

But she is _here_, not there. And she _is_ alive, and whole, and innocent, right here, right now, right in front of me. None of that evil has happened, and I vow it never will, not so long as any part of me is not ash.

The entire front of my body aches to hold her. Her sweet, sweet softness. I remember hugging her pillow. I remember her snugged tight to my side as I stopped the van from taking her life. If I take even one breath, now, I am lost. _She_ is lost. I retreat instead to the rocking chair. It is familiar to me, my refuge. My arms fold themselves tightly against my chest, hugging her scent and the emptiness of air.

It does not escape me that her scent and the air can survive my embrace, but she most certainly could not.

I draw up my knees, to make a cage for my nose, as blackness and silence descend on me. I am a blank. I am blind wishing, and nothing more.

The sounds of the house carry on around me.

I feel motion, hear creaking. Like a small boat upon the ocean.

I am _rocking_ in the chair. _How long?_

I freeze again.

Did she wake?

No. But now I imagine it. Bella waking. Bella _seeing_ me. In my mind's eye she is not afraid, but yawns and rubs her eyes, as she stumbles over and crawls sleepily into my arms. I welcome her so gladly. Somehow we manage it, the two of us, curled together here on the chair.

Isabella.

Isabella, Isabella, Isabella.

An owl calls in the dark outside.

_Is – a bell – ahhh …_

She stirs, the quilt slips, and I spy it. The edge of my journal. Just visible under her crossed arms, which clasp it to her breast. She sleeps, holding this thing of mine.

"_What if we just leave her __**alone**__? What if we __**move**__?" _Esme pleaded_. "Alice?"_ She would do anything to avert the vision that Alice had told. Anything. Even leave this house that she has made so beautiful. We all considered it. Even I. Could I do this? I had failed in my quest to leave Bella for Alaska. But if my whole family were to spirit me away …

We all considered it, thought upon it, as Alice sat silent, back in her seat beside Jasper.

Minutes passed.

"_What's that, Grandma?"_

It was Alice's voice, but pitched high, like a child's. Her eyes were half-closed, only the whites visible, something that had happened only twice before since Alice came to us. All of us wondered again if she had done such things as a human. And what may have been done to her as a result.

"_That's Edward's journal." _None if us had ever heard Alice's voice _old _before_._

"_Who's Edward?"_

"_He was a boy."_

"_Did you know him?"_

"_No, sweet pea. He lived before my time."_

A strange chill stole over me then – as if someone had stepped over my grave. It steals over me again, now, in this room, with this girl, whose voice will one day be old.

"_Where did you get it?" _Alice's hands motioned in the air, as if picking something up, turning it over.

"_I found it lying around."_ And we all saw Alice's face … transformed. Gentle. Wistful. Sad.

"_Will you read it to me?"_ The high, piping voice, asking so guilelessly.

"_Come sit in my lap."_

There was a long silence. But the spell was not yet broken. Suddenly –

"_We're going to get in so much trouble!" _A _boy_?

"_She wanted to have it. She told me. We HAVE to do this." _A girl … _the_ girl … but not a child any more.

"_You're crazy! She's dead already, what the hell does she care?"_

"_I __**promised**__! It was our secret."_

"_There's DEAD people in here!"_

"_Shut up. It's my grandma. She loved me." _Harsh and urgent whispers in the dark.

"_Which one is it?"_

"_This one, I'm pretty sure."_

"_I can't believe I'm doing this."_

"_Where's the lock-pick? Give it to me. … … Come on, help me here, it's heavy."_

"_Oh God, look at her, she's all … she looks like she's made out of wax."_

"_Shut up."_

"_What if they open the casket? They'll __**see.**__"_

"_They're done with all that now. They're just putting her in the earth tomorrow." _Alice's hands motioned again, as if placing something. _"There you go, Grandma. There you go."_

I saw all of it, of course, just as Alice was seeing it, as she sat there, speaking in tongues. Bella's hair nearly transparent in the dark, her face only recognizable by the structure of her bones beneath the spiritless flesh. A worn leather book lying under crossed arms, clasped to a shirt of white eyelet lace.

There is no way that I can pull my journal out of her hands without waking her. No way at all. This mission is a lost cause. Tomorrow is Saturday. I cannot stake out the house for two days on the chance it may be left empty at some point. _Chief Swan's Quileute friends often visit on the weekend_ ...

I will have to sneak back here during school hours on Monday. But the distance between the school and this house is too great, and there is no path that does not cross human traffic. I will have to be tardy, or absent, or cut a class. There will be a conspicuous _coincidence,_ between my absence and the disappearance of this journal. If Bella should speak of it, even if only to her father …

I hunch in on myself on the rocking chair. Jasper is right. The entire situation has gotten completely out of hand. Today, during school, before she could have discovered the journal, I had had my _one_ chance to rectify my mistake safely. And I squandered it.

I sit motionless on the chair, lost in a river of images gliding through each other. Bella on her bier. This young girl before me. The roses, and the thorns. Myself, carried with her into the earth.

I want it. I want her. I want her to know me. I want her to keep me all through her mortal life, a secret whose truth she alone knows. And I want her to carry me with her, when day is done, to where I should have gone so long ago. Maybe this is why she came to Forks in the first place. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know anything any more, only that I must not make a sound. I let her breathing and her heartbeat be my own. Until first light edges the sky.

* * *

_A/N: Under the bridge between my imagination and my words, there lives a very nasty troll. Said troll has been coming out to play, lately. A lot. Lucky for me I have been in the company of the best Nanny Goats Gruff anyone could ask for. Geo3: you believe when I don't. Averysubtlegift: good God woman, your patience knows no bounds. And you always speak up for Edward and Bella. Quothme: don't blush, you know I have to thank you here. Chicklette: I am just humbled by the things you say._

_To all you readers, I also want to say a special thanks. Your visits, your reviews, your pm's, and in many cases your friendships, are such wonderful gifts that I never imagined until they happened._

_Lastly,_

_**The provenance of the chapter title …**_

_If you could read my mind, love,_

_What a tale my thoughts could tell._

_Just like an old time movie,_

_About a ghost from a wishing well._

_In a castle dark, or a fortress strong,_

_With chains upon my feet._

_You know that ghost is me._

_And I will never be set free_

_As long as I'm a ghost that you can't see._

_- from the song, "If You Could Read My Mind", by Gordon Lightfoot_

_

* * *

_

Happy Holidays to everyone. Update news on my profile.


	33. Consequences

**Consequences**

Tyler is out of the hospital. But he's not back at school yet.

"He doesn't want to be here all looking like the mummy," Lauren says. The teachers are sending his assignments for his mother to home school him for a while. Forks doesn't have any tutors. Lauren has been going over to his house every day to help him keep up.

"Does it still hurt?" I ask.

"Sometimes," she answers, "When they're changing the dressings." One of the wounds on his cheek was jagged and deep, and it still leaks through the stitches sometimes, and sticks even to the non-stick bandage. They have to be careful taking it off; otherwise it could tear everything open again.

"You really like him, don't you."

She gets an irritated look on her face, and turns away from me. "Why the hell is it so hard for people to believe that?"

"I believe it," I say.

"Yeah, well, you're Bella." As if that's a synonym for loony. Or maybe just different. The new kid. Chief's daughter. Charmed life. I don't really want to think of myself in any of those ways. But that's who I am.

It's eight days into February already, and time for a dance. Valentine's Day falls in the middle of the week this year, so the dance has been scheduled for the Saturday after it. I can't help but wonder if they will be mixing a George Washington theme in with all the pink and red hearts. I think it would be cool for everyone to go to the dance in breeches and waistcoats and hoop petticoats and tricorn hats. Or something like that.

Biology class is over. I've been religious about not glancing back at Edward's seat all week, so to be honest I don't know for sure if he was even in class. Certainly he's gone by the time I have my backpack together and am walking out the door. But my mind is on the journal he left in my room. The Edward who wrote it was only sixteen. My age. He's dead now – has to be – but when he wrote it he was sixteen. All excited about being allowed to sit at the adults' table at Christmas. No more squirt seat with his little cousins. He'd played the piano for the Christmas carols after dinner. His dad brought him into the drawing room with the men afterwards, didn't let him smoke, but gave him a snifter of brandy. He wrote that it burned going down, "but I believe that I acquitted myself well."

It's so strange to think that the boy who wrote that is dead. He seems so alive when I'm reading. I don't want to imagine him dead in a grave somewhere. I can't even bear to think of him old and sad and alone. Would he have been sad in his old age? I don't want to imagine that. I want to imagine him having had a good and happy life, surrounded by family, like he writes about in the journal. But mostly I want to just keep him in my mind, forever just the way he is in the words that I'm reading. Like a snapshot in time.

His handwriting is so much like Edward's that I'm beginning to think that he must really _be_ Edward's great grandfather. Unless Edward's handwriting is like his because he copied and learned it from the journal. I can't tell. I wonder what 1917 Edward looked like? I can't help seeing him with the face of the Edward I know.

"So, Bella!"

Oh, Christ! I don't even know where I am in the hallway. Mike Newton is walking beside me. Where's Jessica?

"You kinda zoned out, there. You okay?"

He looks concerned. Somehow the whole town seems to think I really did get some kind of head injury in the van crash.

"I'm good."

"So, the Valentine's Day dance is coming up." Mike is looking at me with kind of hopeful, kind of uncertain eyes. This is horrible. All of Jessica's plotting and it's not Edward asking me out, it's Mike. The guy _she_ likes. I think of myself dancing with Edward. I remember being held against him with metal screaming in my ears. I remember his hands steadying me from losing my balance, keeping my I.V. in place. I never landed a single kick on him. Maybe, just maybe, he could dance with me safely without getting stepped on. Would I say yes if he asked me?

"You wanna go?" It's Mike asking. He hasn't quite asked if I want to go _with him_.

"With me?" Now he has.

I should say yes. Do something normal, instead of pining over a diary, and a boy who said I stink; who ignores me … except when he's saving me from being a bloody smear on the side of my truck. Mike's not a bad guy at all. He's funny and kind of cute, and I think he really likes me.

I should say yes. It could be fun, even if there are no petticoats or tricorn hats involved. Except that it won't. Jessica will hate me. And Mike will probably end the night missing a toe. And I'll feel bad about everything. Most of all that Edward didn't ask me.

Mike is still waiting for an answer. I can see on his face that he knows he's already been shot down. At least he doesn't know that I'm choosing cowhide and parchment and faded brown ink over him.

"I can't."

"It's ok, no sweat." He doesn't even want to know why I can't, just wants to get away from this embarrassing moment as quickly as possible.

"Jessica … she – "

Mike is still within earshot, and courteous enough to turn back to listen.

"I think she's hoping you might ask her. I mean, if you wanted to." I am so lame. Just shoot me now.

But somehow it's the right thing to say. I can see it on his face. _She's not blowing me off; She's being loyal to a friend. That's not a bad thing. _He'll take it; and so will I. Half a truth is better than none.

Jessica is running up to us now. "Jeez you guys, why didn't you wait for me?" I realize she must have gotten a call from Auntie Flo. We're at the door to English, and Mike is looking at Jessica sideways. She feels his eye beams and looks at him back. I wonder if he'll try to pass her a note during class. They both sit near the back. It looks like I'm off the hook for the whole dance thing, anyway. I feel relieved, but also a little strange, like I'm floating by myself in limbo.

* * *

Jasper is gone.

It's my fault.

Six days have passed since I returned from the futile mission to recover my journal. I'd found the house shockingly empty when I got back. Isolated and surrounded by forest as it is, the place had felt like some deserted and haunted mansion. I, a blood-sucking monster, had felt a shudder pass down my spine, as my steps echoed across the threshold in the lamp-less gloom.

The sky had been fish-belly grey by the time that Emmett and Rosalie, and then Esme, and finally Alice and Jasper had shown up. If it had not been a Saturday, we would have been in real trouble. The five Cullen "children" all arriving late to school is more conspicuous than we want to be right now.

Rose and Em had gone joy-riding to Seattle. Esme and Carlisle had spent the night in, of all places, Bessie's diner; sitting in a booth and pretending to drink coffee until Carlisle left her there to go to his shift.

Alice and Jasper had been strangely subdued on their return, barely speaking to anyone. The rest of us had put it off to the tension of the evening before. The meeting around the dinner table had brought us all too close, too deeply into each other's minds. We have so little privacy with each other as it is. Hadn't all of us sought some separate space that night, and the safety of a mate, to make peace with what had been said, and seen? But Alice kept hiding behind recitations of prime numbers and the decimals of pi, and I should have realized that not everything revolved around Bella.

In the days that followed, the two of them hunted apart from the rest of us, and soon, though Jasper tried to make a cyst of numbness around his feelings, we all felt the festering, like an open sore on our own bodies.

Alice had _told_ on him, in front of all of us, there at the dinner table. When I gave Bella up. When Jasper saw the unacceptable risk, and Alice saw what he would do about it. She hadn't just flung herself on him in shock and grief. She had told him what she saw, _right there where we all could hear_, so that shame would shut the door to that future. I saw the _purpose_, the necessity, as it flashed through her mind; and Jasper must have felt it too.

Alice had protected Bella over him.

"_You want her for your sister. I can feel it Alice. I've __**been**__ feeling it. Just like I've been drowning in Edward's thirst for her. And still I've done everything you asked, everything you wanted, even without asking. Everything."_

Conversations held deep in the woods played over and over in their minds each time they returned. Like the rest of us I tried to give them some privacy, but sometimes the injured words spiked through.

"_I know. I know it's cost you."_

"_Don't! Don't humbug me like that. You were mad as a hornet when you saw. I __**felt**__ you, dearest, and it wasn't even something I'd yet __**done**__."_

"_I'm sorry."_

" '_How could I?' Like she's everything to you."_

It doesn't matter that he himself had asked her what she'd seen. And it certainly doesn't help that everyone is letting the matter of the journal, and my nightly visits to Bella's house, go unchecked. We don't know what to do about that mess, and so we have done nothing. But for Jasper the double standard, the risk-taking, the passivity, is intolerable.

This morning, Alice returned alone, one scant minute before the last moment that we could leave and still be on time for school.

There was no time to do anything but simply go. I forged a note from Carlisle to cover Jasper's absence, and handed it in with perfect poker face to Mrs. Cope in the office.

Alice has no more strength to shut me out, and this entire day I have swum through her memory in its endless loop: Jasper running a silent, unhappy circle around Deer Lake, herself staying doggedly with him through the high, snow-locked woods, though his long legs took one stride to her every two.

_He brings up short, so suddenly that she doesn't _**see**_ it, and she nearly bumps into him. He turns to her, but doesn't put his hands on her. Like watching a movie with no sound, I cannot feel but only see._

"_Don't try to follow me."_

_There is a pause, and it must be that he has blasted her with how truly and strongly he means it, because it withers her, right there in the snow._

_And then he is gone. Not as fast as me, but fast enough to be out of sight in the blink of an eye._

Rosalie has scared every boy in the entire school with her beauty turned terrible in stone-lipped anger. Emmett does his best to comfort her, hardly letting go of her hand from first bell to last. "It'll be okay," he soothes. "Sometimes a man's just gotta have him some solitude."

My own mind is a morass of fear, and I can only be grateful that Jasper is in fact too far away to discover me, too far to reveal my selfishness to the rest of our family. For the one I fear for is not Alice or Jasper or our family, but Bella.

All day I have tracked her to distraction through the minds of her classmates. All day I have scanned the tickling ether of thoughts for sign of Jasper circling back, or waiting for her at her father's house. Trapped as I am at school, that place is beyond my range, and all I can think of is Alice's vision somehow coming to bloody fruition before I can get there to stop it.

Jasper is gone.

It's my fault.

And yet, standing here in the parking lot, as the rest of the students depart obliviously around us, I don't want to admit it, don't want to take the blame. It doesn't matter. Everyone's eyes, and thoughts, are pointed at me.

_Rose is right, _Emmett thinks_. This is just goin' from bad to worst. _

"Who's going to bring him back?" Rosalie asks.

Too many thoughts, too many intentions crowd forth all at once. Alice starts to crumble.

"One at a time!" I hiss.

We can't do this in public, and I am beside myself to get it done quickly, for I have lost track of Bella once she left sight of the school. We drive in my car and Emmett's jeep. No one wants to go back to the house. This is cruel to Esme, but somehow Jasper's flight has become something that we want to settle among ourselves.

Bogachiel State Park is close by, with forest dense enough to hide us.

The first campground is deserted, and we take it over. There is a barbecue hearth, with soaked black coals, and a picnic table just sturdy enough for us all to sit at. Though sheltered, the park is in lowland like Forks, and last week's ice and snow are almost gone under the faint drizzle.

_One at a time. _

One at a time, each of us forms the intention to search for Jasper and bring him back. I can't concentrate, and so I lag to the last. Alice's eyes look hollow. She has been doing too much these weeks. I have known this. Just the hiding from me has taken a toll. But she soldiers on, stilling herself, opening herself, _searching_, for the outcomes of each of us in turn.

I watch.

Her visions are slow to come, forced and frayed when they do. The dripping green around us, the wet wood of the table, _these_ are the things that are real. All the rest are phantasms – echoes of voices whose words are indistinct, floating faces obscured by fog and tree branches – and I can't help wondering if what Alice is seeing isn't just made up out of whole cloth in her head.

"Emmett. It has to be Emmett," she says at last.

I can't believe this. This isn't going to be a straight line run. It will involve casting back and forth over a huge area to pick up the trail. Unless Jasper is waiting to be found, I am the only one who has a prayer of covering the ground fast enough to find his scent before it goes completely cold; of detecting him at a distance; of running him down when I do.

I am about to protest, but Emmett shakes his head. " 'Course it's me. He ain't gonna let some damn Yankee come fetch him." _I got no gift. He won't spook. And we both got difficult women. _Emmett sighs mentally at his own thought. _It's gotta be me, Ed-boy. Don't need Alice to see that. _

He checks the battery on his cell phone, pulls Rosalie to him in a quick, hard kiss, and then he's gone.

Fine.

But before I can take a single step, Alice's voice rings out, "Edward, _stop! _"

"What?" I don't have _time_ for this!

"You can't go to Bella's house in daylight!" The consequences reel out in her mind. I am discovered. A neighbor, returning home early from work, sees me skulking in the tree. A phone call is made. There are handcuffs. Chief Swan's eyes like flint. A hoosegow. It gets complicated after that. Very complicated.

"You selfish son of a bitch." Rosalie.

"Leave my mother out of this!" I roar.

"Your mother's _dead_, Edward! She's a pile of bones in a rotting wood box. Just like Bella will be some day. But _we'll_ still all be just the same as we are right now. Exactly the same. Until the damn sun burns out. _You can't love a human, Edward!_"

I don't love her. _I don't_. I'm just trying to keep everyone safe. Not just Bella. Surely if Bella gets dragged into the woods and eaten … There will be an investigation. Her things will be gone through. The journal, the medicine recipe …

Rosalie's patience is at an end. "Did any of you think to call Esme and tell her what we're doing?" It's a rhetorical question, obviously. "Well I did. She's expecting at least some of us to come home." She glares at Alice and me. "I'm taking the jeep. Keep him on a leash, Alice. At least do that."

The jeep's engine dwindles into the distance, leaving the forest around the campsite dead silent. Even the pattering drizzle has stopped.

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," Alice says at last, in a very small voice.

My own mind can only echo her wretchedly. It wasn't supposed to happen this way at all.

I put Bella on the chopping block to keep our family together. Instead we're only falling apart.

"Maria used him," I say, because I don't know what else to say. "Used him hard. He was with her for a long time."

"I know. He told me all about it."

I know that she knows. But I also know that he has never opened to her the dark Pandora's box of how it _felt_: sixty years buried under lust and thirst and hate and fear and pain – not only his own, but those of all the others around him, vampire and human alike; the lucid moments of horror at what he had become; the despair; and the ways that his maker had used all of these things to bind him to her.

Jasper has sheltered Alice from all of that.

"I know," she says, answering the question that I might have asked. "I know he held back. He wanted to be a hero. My hero. That's all he ever really wanted, you know? To protect the women and children. How could I not give him that? How could I force him to share the ugliness?"

"All these weeks he's been doing things against his better judgment for you. He's served you. Served your dreams."

It's what he's always done, right from the start. Alice sees forward, but I've seen Jasper's memories, things he's never told her, because her pain would be his pain. And I've seen his present, too, how much of his gift he uses on himself. I wonder if Alice knows, if she even _can_ know, how much she has asked of Jasper for the sake of her visions: to find our family, to stay with us and keep our ways, and now, to guard some impossible love that she feels for a human girl.

Alice balls up her fists and pushes the heels of her hands against her eyes. "Bella was going to love _him_, too, Edward. She was going to love all of us." Her voice falls to a whisper. "She's a nice girl. He would have felt horrible afterwards, if he'd hurt her."

"Is he going to hurt her now?" I ask. I just can't help myself.

"No. That future is gone. It's gone."

"Are you _sure_?"

"Pretty sure." Her mind is blank of anything except the here and now, and I don't know what to believe.

"But she can't be completely safe any more, can she?"

"Humans are never safe, Edward. You know that. Even _we_ can be killed, if someone sets out to."

"But I've made her less safe than she would have been."

"You don't know that, Edward. You don't know that at all."

Nonsense. Of course I know it. As if my uncontrollable thirst for her weren't enough, I have step by step brought Bella closer and closer to the veil that separates our world from hers. Rosalie thinks that in saving her from dying I ripped that veil altogether, and now there is no fate for Bella but death.

How is that fair? How is that in any way fair at all?

I sit in silence. So much more has happened since that moment in the parking lot. Rose is right. It's all gone from bad to worse.

Alice is far away, searching for the outcomes of Emmett's chase. "Take me home, now, please, Edward," she says. "I want to go home."

* * *

I find Esme in the meander of garden that winds throughout our yard. It is winter; hardly growing season, but that does not stop her from tending. _If you want to find springtime, you need to search for it in winter._ It's one of her homemade little sayings, and she is thinking it now, in response to my approach.

"Hello, Edward." Her hand reaches up as I squat down beside her, and she sifts her fingers through my hair. If Jasper were here, the motherly tenderness of that gesture would have warmed all of us.

I don't answer, just take my place beside her as she works her way through the garden which is also a path leading from one hidden oasis of beauty to another. It is her child, as much as any of us are. She tends it at human speed, never hurrying. Even without Jasper, I can sense the peace that it brings to her mind.

"Oh, look, the meadow rue is coming up. It's early_._" Esme's thoughts linger over images from last fall: this patch of soil warmed by a bit of Indian summer sun in early November, the pointed little seeds falling from her hands. Now her fingertips loosen the cold mulch around the tiny green spikes, as she envisions fluff-like balls of pink and mauve stamens that will be its blooms, come May.

I can see and hear her searching for the words she wants to say to me, and it makes me feel the need to apologize. "I've caused you worry."

"Oh, Edward." _My sweet boy._ She wants to hold me, but forebears. Her hands are plying the rich dark of the soil, and she knows how fastidious I can be.

"Everything we do has consequences."

She doesn't mean it harshly at all, but God, how her words have teeth.

She crab-walks a few steps, to comb and trim the stand of ornamental grasses that shelters this bend of the path. "You left your journal in Bella's room."

_Not on purpose. It wasn't on purpose …_

But Jasper is gone.

He kept calling me a loose cannon. Now there are two of us.

"Edward." Esme looks at me softly, bringing me back from my thoughts. I can see her wondering what could have happened in Bella's room that would make me _forget_ my journal. I don't want her to know. I don't want anyone to know.

"It didn't start there, you know. Leaving your journal has had consequences, it's true, but it is also the consequence of something else." She stands for a moment, to look off into the woods. "You took your journal with you when you left your room that night."

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

"You wouldn't have been in her room with your journal in your hand, if you hadn't saved her life that morning, Edward. Would you take away that cause, so as not to have its consequence?"

No. God in heaven, no.

"And you wouldn't have been here to save her if you hadn't chosen to come back from Alaska, to endure this dreadful tug of war with yourself."

"It doesn't _matter_ where I am. I've _smelled_ her. I'll always be one step away from hunting her down and killing her." _Any breath that I take could be her last_.

Esme's hand lingers among the flag-like heads of the grasses. "I know." The face of the man that she killed in '44, long after she had thought herself safe from such things, rises behind her closed eyes. "I know."

"Esme, I didn't – "

"Shhh, Edward it's alright. I've made my peace. Not with him, I can't ever presume to that, but with what I am, and what I did. We all must." She wipes her hand on her work apron and squeezes mine firmly.

"Bella was living in Arizona, yet she came here to Forks. We were living in Alaska, but we came to Forks, also. All of our actions have had consequences, haven't they? Who could know that we all would meet here? Not even Alice."

Esme draws in a slow breath, and I am transported to a cliff overlooking frigid grey water.

_And rocks. The rocks below are sharp and clear. A damp wind pulls, tugging insistently toward that last step into emptiness. The thin coat with its flapping hem offers no warmth. Fingers and hands are already numb. The wind pulls, but it cannot pull out the ache of breasts too full of milk, heart too full of loss._

"I thought all my consequences would end there. But they never really do. The world goes on, one way or another. Sometimes we go on with it, too."

She pauses, with no thought at all, only feeling. If Jasper were here, I would know what it was. Now, I can only guess. After a time, she turns back to the garden, squats down again to tend it.

"You know, I still remember when I first met Carlisle. That is almost the only thing that I remember of my former life."

Carefully teasing the dead growth from the living, she crumbles it in her fingers and then works it back into the soil.

"That first sight will always feel like yesterday to me. Sometimes it is even more real to me than my real yesterdays. Those keep changing. But this memory remains the same.

"He was so beautiful to me."

Her words are surrounded by her memory. Windowpanes framing heroic clouds. The sun setting over her father's wheat fields. A slim, dark figure hurrying through the waist-high waves of amber and gold, not bothering at all to follow the road, or the long wagon track that led to the house.

"He was dressed in black, not white, but I still thought he was an angel. He held my hand when he talked to me. That had consequences, too. I will always believe that God led me to Ashland so that Carlisle could save me from my folly."

Esme pauses again, and takes my hand in both of hers, crumbled earth and all.

"Alice still says this will all work out. I choose to believe her. You should, too Edward. You should, too."

* * *

Bella has pretty ankles. They are slender and sweet: not too bony, yet not too soft, either. She is lying on her stomach on her bed, knees bent, ankles aloft, crossed one over the other, as she reads my old journal.

I had thought she would be asleep by now, but she is not.

Seeing her light on, I should have gone home, but I did not.

I should have at least stayed in the forest, well away from her yard, guarding her from a distance, but I did not do that, either. Instead, I am playing squirrel here in the tree outside her window, clinging halfway up, keeping the trunk between her and me, peeking past it to watch her.

I cannot see what page or date she has read to. All I can do is be mesmerized by her ankles, bared as they are by loose pajamas that sag to her calves.

Her feet are like a pair of doves, nestled against each other there in mid air. I want to hold them in my hands. Even if they are the coldest part of her body, Bella's feet would still feel warm to my hands.

And my hands would feel cold to her feet.

Who wants to have their feet held by cold hands? Not even I.

Not even I.

* * *

_A/N: There are so many people who make my writing possible, I just want to say thank you. My employer, who gives me enough livelihood that I can have the free time to do this. My family, who tolerate my disappearing into my woman cave to write. Averysubtlegift, who is absolutely tireless in reading, critiquing and encouraging. Geo3, who somehow sees beauty where I can only see a mare's nest of disorganized thought, Woodlily and Chicklette and Quothme who have held my hand SO much as I struggled with this breech-birth of a chapter; and every one of you wonderful readers who have been so patient, and have pm'd me and who just make all of this so worth while. Thank you all so much. Special heartfelt thank you also to Stephenie Meyer for creating this world and these characters who have enchanted me so._


	34. The Blessing Way

**The Blessing Way**

It doesn't rain all day. Around noon it almost looks like the sun will come out. It never does, but for a little while the clouds are lighter than I've seen them since I got to Forks. Uncle Billy and Jacob are here at the house. Jacob and I are washing and waxing the truck together, while Uncle Billy and Dad talk and watch T.V., and wait for the fish they caught to marinate. It's much nicer to take care of the truck with Jacob than alone. Even if he does pretend like he's going to spray me with water from the hose. He doesn't though. It's still way too cold for that.

I watch my hands holding the cloth, making circles of streaky white on the faded red skin of my monster. It looks like mist, swirling in spirals, or one of those circle labyrinths they have in monasteries. I think of Uncle Billy doing the blessing. I see it in my mind the way I imagined it … the high place looking out over water, the dark trees and the truck bright red, the abalone shell with something burning and making a good smell.

The raven's wing sweeps the swirls of smoke. Wax on.

The wind carries it away. Wax off.

"Earth to Bella."

I startle. Jacob is right beside me. His cloth is almost touching mine. "Hey," he says.

"What?"

"You been waxing that fender for the past five minutes."

"I have _not_!"

"Well, three, anyway."

"You've been timing me? Where's your watch?"

"Hey! Hands off the goods!" And he runs around the other side of the truck. I am so not going to be bested by him. I throw the cloth on the hood of the truck and pick up the hose.

"I'm going to spray you with water, Jacob Black." I think of the mud pies. Now it's car wax and water we're getting all over ourselves. He dodges and weaves, ducks behind the fenders, and soon the truck is dripping, the tarp in the back is all rumpled and soaked, and I somehow manage to get myself wet, too, but Jacob is pretty much untouched. Stupid boy. But we're both laughing, and I'm happy.

I'm happy.

It feels nice.

All of a sudden he comes up behind me and takes the hose away. "C'mon, Bella, you need to get changed now, it's freezing out here."

I look at the truck – half of it still whitewashed in stubborn wax circles, half if it sort of shining. No rust anywhere. "I got this," Jacob says. And that's when I know, I _know_, that this was supposed to be _his_ truck. But then I came back from Phoenix. And Uncle Billy gave it to _me_. Why?

I make a promise to myself, to give the truck back to Jacob when I leave Forks. It won't be that long, after all, a year and a half. When I graduate. Jacob will be just about legal to drive it on his own by then. It'll be all right. It'll be perfect, actually. I just have to take really good care of it in the mean time.

I run my hand along the cab door, right where I almost lost my life. Almost blessed the truck with my blood. My hand is on the cold metal; and Edward's arms around me, and the warm inside of my monster, are all mixed up in my mind. The feeling washes over me. I'm attached. I can't help it. It's going to hurt when I leave. Again.

"Hey, you smell that? Our dads are cooking!" Jacob's smile is a mile wide. "I can't wait! I'm _starving_. Hurry up and change, Bella."

"Okay."

* * *

I come downstairs in dry clothes, and Jacob comes inside, just as my dad is plating up the fish. It's steelhead, the four-pounder. There's another one, almost six pounds, sitting in the ice chest, that Uncle Billy's going to take home and jerk. We'll get some of that in a couple of weeks. Tonight's meal is strip filets in lemon butter, with garlic and parsley, Worcestershire, and a dash of Tabasco, all wrapped in tin foil and broiled up just right.

I'd begged off the fishing trip at five o'clock this morning, told my dad I had some craft things I wanted to get in town. I really did have to get those things, even though it's not exactly for school. But Dad didn't ask, and I sure can't tell, so it's all right. Right now my mouth is just watering like crazy for the fish. I make sure we all have water (or beer for the grown-ups), and we go into the den to eat.

Dad says a nice grace tonight, and I'm glad, because this fish died just a few hours ago so we could eat it. I always wonder if some of the soul might still be hanging around in the flesh when we strip it off the bones and throw it on the fire. There's no way to know, I guess, but it's always good to say thank you.

"Jacob!" Uncle Billy's looking over at his son pretty sternly. "Wash your hands before you eat."

"Oops." Jacob runs up the stairs to the bathroom. He plunks himself down on the floor next to me when he comes back and starts tucking into the fish. Pretty much the only noise in the room is the Sonics game on the flat screen – that and a lot of chewing and grunting. Even me.

After a little while, Jacob stops to get his second wind, and leans over to me and whispers, "Your bedroom smells funny." I try not to choke or panic or do anything obvious. For the first time I realize what a huge guilty conscience I've got, hiding Edward's journal and all the secrets it represents under my mattress in my room.

Jacob couldn't have smelled Edward just in the air of my room, could he?

_I_ still smell Edward, just barely, in my pillow and quilts, in the journal, too, of course, and, strangely, in my grandma's rocking chair. Still.

But not in the _air_.

I need to cover up, and fast, so I whisper back, "What the hell were you doing in my _room, _Jacob?"

"I didn't go _in_. Jeez, Bella, what kind of guy do you think I am? But that girly smell is all the way out in the hall."

What does he mean, _girly_ smell? I'm not on my period. But at least it's not _Edward_ smell. Edward and his secrets are safe. I duck my head down and shovel more fish into my mouth, and hope Jacob means my shampoo or something, and not some kind of weird body odor. "Well, I _am_ a girl, you know." Sometimes the best defense is a strong offense.

Jacob just shakes his head. "You should really think about changing your bath products. I'm just saying."

Uncle Billy is looking at us hard, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. It's a horrible thing to think, but right now I am glad, so glad, that he is in a wheelchair, and can't get up the stairs. I pretend like I don't feel him staring, and just finish up my plate. I even grab another dinner roll to wipe up all the juice. Jacob is completely oblivious. I'd say he packs away half of that fish all by himself.

It's a lazy kind of a day, and after clearing we all settle back in the den. Jacob and I play checkers on the floor. That's our thing, now. Along with waxing the truck. Out of the corner of my ear, I hear Uncle Billy and my dad talking low, their voices weaving in and out with the sports announcer and the crowd roaring for the 3-point play.

" … Cullen boys've gone missing."

_What? How does Uncle Billy know?_

"C'mon, Billy, even Carlisle's kids are allowed to get sick once in a while. And they've all got medical issues to begin with, you know that."

Jasper was absent on Thursday. Then he and Emmett _both_ were out of school yesterday. Of course the rumor mill started right up. I try not to listen to that kind of stuff. But why would Uncle Billy care? I don't want to look straight back at him but I'm listening good and hard now.

Uncle Billy just gives a really skeptical sounding "Hmm." I hear him take a swig of his beer. "See if they turn up by Monday," he mutters.

And that's all anybody says about it for the rest of the night.

Jacob and Uncle Billy stay until after dark. It's almost like Uncle Billy is doing it on purpose. He jokes with me like always, brushes my hair with his hand like always, but I wonder why he's hanging around so late. Finally Dad has to shoo them both home. It's completely not legal for Jacob to be driving after dark, and by seven o'clock my dad is sincerely antsy about it.

"C'mon Billy, you're gonna make me look bad, here." Chief of Police and all.

"In for a penny in for a pound, Charlie." Because it's not really legal for Jacob to even be driving at all. Even with his dad in the front seat next to him. Even if his dad had both his legs. Jacob's still a couple of months shy of fifteen.

I watch my dad get Uncle Billy down the steps of our porch, and then into the car. He's careful, and he knows what he's doing. I remember that my mom said they were in the same unit in Iraq, something about Uncle Billy being my dad's C.O. I watch them; watch their faces in the dark. To remember.

After all the goodbyes Dad and I go back inside to clean up. The kitchen is really messy. It's not that the men can't cook, it's just that they don't clean up as they go.

* * *

_A/N: The Blessing Way: _

The **Blessing Way** or **Hózhójí **is one half of the major Navajo song ceremonial complexes, the other half being the Enemy Way. The rites and prayers in the Blessing Way are concerned with healing, creation, harmony and peace. The song cycles recount the elaborate Navajo mythology related to the rites contained within the Blessing Way.

Perhaps the most important of all these rituals is the Kinaaldá ceremony, in which a young girl makes the transition to womanhood upon her menarche. During the course of the ceremony, the girl enacts the part of Changing Woman (Asdzą́ą́ Nádleehé), the deity responsible for fertility entering the world. _(from wikipedia)_

More detailed information may be found here:

http : / www . hanksville . org/voyage/navajo/BlessingWay . php3

Pictures of textiles honoring the sacred sand paintings, and outlines of some of the major chants that they represent, may be found here:

http : / www . canyonart . com/sandrugs . htm

* * *

_The Enemy Way ... _

The **Enemy Way** or **Anaʼí Ndááʼ** is one half of the major Navajo song ceremonial complexes, the other half being the Blessing Way. The Enemy Way is a traditional ceremony for countering the harmful effects of alien ghosts or _chindi_, and has been performed for returning military personnel.

The Enemy Way ceremony involves the patient identifying (through chant, sandpainting, and dance) with the powerful mythical figure Monster Slayer. The ceremony lasts three days; on the second morning a mock battle is performed.

Associated with the Enemy Way is a Girl's Dance (sometimes called "Squaw Dance"), to which young men are invited by marriageable women. This derives from an aspect of the Monster Slayer myth, in which two captive girls are liberated. _(from wikipedia)_


	35. Somewhere in Time

_What has gone before: Bella has been reading Edward's journal. Edward hasn't been able to steal it back. __Jasper is gone._ Billy and Jacob have just left after a truck washing and a fish feast at the Swan's house. Jacob had commented about the 'girly smell' coming from Bella's room. Billy had talked to Charlie about the "Cullen boy gone missing ... " Bella and her dad are cleaning up in the kitchen.

_As always, this is Stephenie Meyer's forest. I'm just playing._

* * *

**Somewhere in Time**

The yellow handprint on the floor in front of the sink is in a pretty awkward place. I have to stand a little to the side so as not to step on it as I'm washing the dishes. Dad is helping, sort of.

I'm not really paying attention, so he takes me totally by surprise. "I hear they got some kind of 'Pre-Valentine' party going on over at the Hobbes' place tonight." He pauses, then asks, "Did you want to go?"

I look up at the clock on the wall. It's almost eight.

He's followed where my eyes went. "They're probably just getting started."

"I don't really hang out with those guys, Dad."

And even if I did, they probably wouldn't invite me. Chief's daughter. I might as well have a straight arrow tattooed across my forehead.

"Oh."

The water rinses over the last plate in my hand.

"I hear Jessica Stanley's going to be there. You hang out with her, don't you?"

She's going with Mike. I would just be a third wheel. I debate whether or not to actually _talk_ to my dad, tell him all the ins and outs of teenage socializing – or not socializing in my case. In the end I chicken out. "Are you going to send one of your guys over to check on them?"

"You know I am, Bells, that's my job."

I don't know what to say in the silence. I didn't mean to put it like I have no life because I'm his daughter. I really didn't, and really, that's _not_the reason. The reason is a dead boy's soul, sleeping under my mattress.

It's the safest place I could think of.

My dad sighs. "Well, maybe some other time."

"Yeah. I had fun with Jacob, today. It was a good day."

It was. It really was. But now, day is done. I dry my hands and hug my dad, just for a second. "I'm going to go upstairs and listen to music."

"Okay, kid. Sweet dreams."

"G'night, Dad."

"Night."

And I feel his eyes following me up the stairs. Creaky step and all. _I'm sorry, Dad. At least I'm here, right? At least I'm here._ For a while.

Getting ready for bed doesn't take very long. I'm really a bad excuse for a girl. I climb under the covers and pull the journal out from under my mattress. I feel like the princess and the pea … except that I never leave the journal under the mattress when I'm actually _on_ the bed.

I hold it now, feeling the soft leather of its binding. It smells like Edward, still, although the scent is fading a little. I don't want it to. I love Edward's smell. I sniff in the air. Jacob couldn't have smelled Edward. Certainly not out in the hall. Maybe he just doesn't like Purple Sage bath gel and shampoo?

I put my nose against the journal again. I wonder if it smells like Edward because he has kept it near him all the time – even now, after he's all grown up. How many times has he read it through, I wonder. And did he find what he was looking for?

I play with the cedar sprig I'm using for a bookmark. I'd found it on the hood of my truck one morning, probably blown down by the hard wind and rain the night before. It seems like just the right thing to use for this journal. It's fragrant too. I'm going to leave it in the journal for Edward when I give it back to him. I know I have to give it back. I'm sure he didn't intend for me to keep it.

The cedar sprig is already almost a third of the way from the front cover to the back. I've been burning through the pages too quickly. The days of this lost Edward's life are passing too fast. But tonight I have a purpose, and so, I go back to the start.

…

_December 30th 1917_

_Today was gloriously lazy. The sun peeked out after we'd gotten home from church, and the dining room was so cheery and bright. Josephine had made us a fine leg of lamb for lunch, with her own patented mint jelly. There is nothing finer in this entire world, I am sure. What am I to do when I marry?_

_Father sat in his chair afterwards with the Sunday paper while I doodled on the piano, and Mother was beside him picking through each section as he put it down. Finally curiosity got the better of both of us, and I asked Mother what she was looking for. She said she thought there might be some word of a Christmas truce, like they'd had the first year of the war._

_Father called Mother "Elizabeth," and shook his head that way that he does. I felt quite badly for her, but I needn't have. My mother is as game as they come. She piped right up and said that they'd done it once before._

_There had been stories in all the papers about it: how the soldiers from both sides had buried their dead together, exchanged rations and cigarettes and coat buttons, played ball games on the frozen mud in no man's land. The war was only a few months old, then. I'd been thirteen. The newspaper said the truce lasted all the way to New Year's Day._

_Father reminded Mother that the generals had put a stop to it all; that one can't have that sort of thing in a war, and it certainly won't happen again._

_He rustled his paper quite noisily, then, and got back to his reading. But I'm sure he heard Mother, too, when she whispered, "More's the pity." I'm sure he heard, because later, much later, I saw him take her to his side and say, "This is a man's war, darling, not a child's fairy tale. It's the way of the world. Let us just be glad that Edward is still too young to be in it."_

_"But he won't always be," Mother said._

…

The first time I read that, I'd googled World War I. It ended in November of 1918. Edward had still been seventeen then. Too young to go. Safe. He was safe. But his parents couldn't know that until it ended.

I run my fingers over the faded ink, the words in beautiful script: telling things that make me want pictures, make me want to _see_. I have the library. I have Google. And now I have the little scrapbook kit that I got in town this morning. I lean off the bed and pull it out of its brown paper bag, inside my backpack.

I know I have to give Edward his journal back. But I can make a keepsake for myself from my reading. Pictures of his ancestor's time and place. No one will know what it means but me.

I search for "Christmas Truce," and find pictures in black and white. I choose at last an image of an actual newspaper front page, dated January 3rd, 1915. It's a bunch of young men in long military coats standing together in a frozen hay field. I guess the ones with spikes on their helmets are the Germans. I expected them to look very different from pictures of today. But they could almost be a bunch of soldiers in Iraq. Some of them have moustaches. I suddenly think how lucky I am that my dad came back. He could have died over there, and then where would I be now? I would have never known him. Would my mom have raised me? Or maybe Gran. She only lived until I was twelve. I would have been an orphan, then. Like Edward.

The scrapbook that I got is small, the same size as Edward's journal. I have to shrink the picture down a little when I print it so it won't take up the whole page. The faces are too small to see clearly, but it's enough that when I look at it I will remember what it meant to Edward.

…

_January 1st 1918_

_A new year begins. The morning sky is white with snow._

_I have resolved that in this journal I shall not record the trifles of my daily life, but only those things which impress themselves deeply upon my mind._

_Written at 8 o'clock pm: Today being a holiday, Father stayed home from work. He joined Mother and me in making the most splendid snowman, even donated one of his old pipes to the cause, while Mother wrapped it round with a scarf, and added a jaunty cap as well. It was great fun, and yet, I imagine this must be the last year that I would do such a thing._

_"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."_

_..._

He put away the childish thing. But I will save it for him. I find, at last, not a picture, but music. "Walking in the Air", the theme song of the movie, "The Snowman". I copy down the notes for the first page of the score, since there is a big watermark over it and I don't have money to download a clean copy to print. The melody stays unfinished on the little square of paper, but somehow that seems right. I paste it on the page, slightly overlapping the picture of the soldiers in no man's land.

…

_January 17th, 1918_

_Two parties who shall remain unnamed have stolen the pretty, crop-haired girl in sailor's blue: right from the board in front of the Post Office! If anyone should ever read this, it was not I. On the contrary they called me a pansy for objecting to the act when they showed me their spoil. "Wasn't right putting her out there instead of Uncle Sam. We couldn't have her freezing in the snow!" They take turns hoarding their prize in their rooms, and I cannot imagine a more dangerous place. What if the maid should turn her up while cleaning? Of one, in particular, I know she is a sterner creature than either of their mothers. She would surely tan his hide and tell his parents after._

_"Look at those lips, Masen. It's my patriotic duty to kiss her goodnight before bed every evening."_

_As if I didn't know perfectly well that he's practicing for a certain young lady._

…

I find the girl in sailor blue. I find two, actually. One has windblown blonde hair and her hands in her pockets, a blue naval officer's jacket on over the hint of a tousled skirt. Her eyes are half closed and the red writing says: I WANT YOU … for THE NAVY. The other girl has dark hair and dimples and looks impishly sideways. Only skin shows beneath the deep open V of her dark blue midshipman's shirt. She says: GEE! i wish i were A MAN … I'd JOIN The NAVY.

I close my eyes and choose one, and print it out in miniature. I hope my dad doesn't hear and wonder what I'm doing.

…

_January 26th, 1918_

_Father and I joined the shovel brigades on the rail lines again, to clear last night's snow. The roads were in no condition for motorcars so it was a heavy trudge to get to where we were needed. I hardly know what headway we made, as flurries were still coming down throughout the day. The newspaper says that we've had more snow in Chicago this month than ever recorded before. We found our gardener there, and Josephine's husband as well, with their boys, and they all tipped their hats to Father. Little children are depending on the trains and delivery trucks for their milk, Father says, and every family for their coal. Rich and poor, we've all got to do our part. It turned out to be grand fun, with snowball fights, and hot chocolate brought between times by "the ladies' auxiliary". But it was a very long Saturday for us all, and I am grateful indeed for my nice warm bed!_

_..._

I try to imagine the snowy scene, teams of men and boys shoveling together. I see it all in sepia, like the ink on the unlined page.

I Google "1918 Chicago snow," and learn that snow fell on 22 of the 31 days that month for a total of almost four feet. I can't find any pictures of the city in that month, but there are a few photographs of soldiers in nearby Fort Grant, shoveling and having a snow fight, with old-fashioned jalopies in the background. It makes a nice collage – the young men and old cars on the snowy street, the Navy girl, and the snowfall chart for the month of January 1918.

_… grateful indeed for my nice warm bed!_

I close my eyes. Did he write this diary lying on his stomach on his bed? Or did he sit at a desk, with proper posture for penmanship? What kind of lamp did he have at his desk? Or bedside? Did he sleep under blankets? Or under a pile of rich quilts? I imagine him in soft flannel pajamas, his face hidden from me, because he is turned away.

The handwriting on the page is so much like the Edward's writing that I know. I do see Edward's writing sometimes, as I'm passing the whole stack of lab reports to the teacher. Sometimes Edward's ends up on top.

I pull out the medicine recipe. It's getting a little bit worn at the creases. I shouldn't keep opening and folding it. But here I am spreading it out next to the journal page. The loops and lines all neat and smooth. Practically identical. If I didn't know it was impossible, I would think they were written by the same person.

Stopping a van with one hand is impossible, too.

My heart flutters.

Edward and I being alive right now is impossible. And yet, we are. Unharmed.

I gaze at the writings, side by side. Perfect match. Like twins. Or a time traveler.

Or a person who lives outside of time completely.

The thought forms in my mind. What if Edward and his family really are … different? What if they've been … touched? Changed. Like Tuck Everlasting …

It can't be. But what if it is? What if the boy who wrote this (At a desk? On his bed?), in a room with lots of dark brown wood and old-fashioned lamps (And quilts? Or blankets?), what if he is the same one who sits behind me in Biology this year, scowling angrily whenever my eyes fall across him?

I don't really believe that. The world doesn't work that way.

But the idea is like a seed that has already found its place in the soil.

I imagine a holy ash tree, deep in a forest where nobody goes, and a little spring flowing up from its roots. I imagine Edward and his family, drinking from that spring.

If they offered me a flask of that water, would I drink it, too?

I find that I'm lying on my side, with all my scrapping stuff messy on the bed next to me, and the journal in my arms held tight to my chest. I feel sad, and confused, and scared; and I have no idea why.

Maybe it's from too much imagining.

I bring myself back to real life: mine, and the real life of this boy who lived a century ago. He _is_ real. His life was real. And it's not lost. He is remembered. And cared about. By Edward. And by me. Even if there's no one left living who knew him in person.

I open the journal again, and the sadness is sharp, like a knife. But I'm going to fight back by making a really good memento in pictures for him.

…

_February 1, 1918_

_Josephine's husband got his hand mangled in the meat grinder at the packing plant yesterday. Josephine was in tears with Mother in the kitchen after dinner tonight. It seems the doctors are talking about infection and gangrene and amputation, and the poor woman is beside herself. I can't imagine such a terrible wound. I asked Father, aren't there safety laws to prevent this sort of thing? He said, precious few. Later, Mother drew Father into the sitting room. I was sent upstairs to read for school, but I heard a bit of what they were saying. Something about reparations and hospital bills. The plant owner is Father's client, so he can hardly represent a worker against him in court, but I heard him say that he would speak to him privately._

_I think I shall never look at our tinned meats quite the same way again._

_…_

_February 11, 1918_

_It being Monday, I was up very early again to help Mother with our family's laundry before I went to school. Josephine's husband is still battling blood fevers from his injury, so she's had to stay at his side. Though we do have an electric washing machine, the crank on the wringer is a very stiff turn, and I didn't want Mother to do that herself. This week I was late leaving, and missed the trolley. When I had to explain my tardiness at school, everyone laughed at me, even Tommy Borden. How could he forget the pact we'd made when we were neighbors, when I was seven and he was eight, and he'd had to stay back one year because the measles had turned to rheumatic fever, and kept him out of school for half a year? That I'd let no one have the last word on him for staying back, and he'd let no one beat me up for being scrawny. But now, of all people, he was the one that said, "Still tied to your mother's apron strings, Masen?"_

_I was still fuming when I returned home, and went straight to my room. Father spoke to me after dinner. He said that Mother thought I was angry with her. I suppose I was, a little bit. Couldn't we have hired someone else if Josephine must tend her husband for weeks on end?_

_"Your mother hired Josephine at a good wage so that their youngest children wouldn't have to go to the mills. Now her husband may never work again. Would you have us fire her as well?" Father asked. How shameful and selfish I felt!_

_He asked if I felt ashamed of helping my own mother. Of course not. Every good son should do so. But it is women's work. I told him what Tommy had said._

_"Women have a harder lot than we men do," Father said. "It's our duty to spare them what we can. What man worth his salt would leave the back-breaking work to his wife or his mother?" Father said he was proud of me for helping, and that Mother is grateful, too. "It's no different from stepping forward to join the shovel brigades, or even going to the Front. A man puts his shoulder to the difficult tasks." I felt better after he'd said this. And now that I think upon it, though Mother has had to manage the kitchen all by herself these past two weeks, she has made my very favorite cherry cobbler for our Monday night desserts. With real ice cream, too._

_If Borden ribs me again, I'll set him straight, but otherwise, I'm not going to harbor it up like a girl._

_…_

This Edward loves music. He gets all excited over going to a concert with his parents and the families they are friends with – a real concert, where he has to get dressed up in coat and tails, starched shirt, and a set of his father's cufflinks. I look for a picture of formal eveningwear in the 1910s. I find some – drawings by an artist named Leyendecker – but I don't think Edward looked like that. All of the pictures are men in their twenties, or even older. I imagine the boy that I know, with his hair combed smooth, and dressed in the old fashioned clothes. They would look so handsome on him, with his slender waist and pure face.

…

_March 10th, 1918_

_Josephine is back with us again. She has been singing the praises of the young surgeon who set and stitched her husband's hand. After the fevers passed and the swelling went down, it seems he will recover almost full use of it. She says it's a miracle. I do believe she would kiss that doctor's feet if he'd let her. As it is she is offering devotions at church every Sunday from now until Easter._

…

…

I've stayed up too late and my eyes are gritty. I've already gone past where I had read to before. I decide to stop here, at the entry for April 23rd.

_What we learned in Botany class today._

Underneath is a diagram of a flower. It's all intricate and careful, fountain-pen lines and no color, with each part labeled in what looks like Latin again. I find a piece of tracing paper in the scrapbook kit and trace the picture as well as I can. Everything is thin and faded, but I manage it, even the names of each part, tracing his beautiful script.

* * *

"Find me."

Before first light, I wake up. The rain has returned. It patters gently in the dark outside my window. There is not another sound in the whole house.

I have dreamed again.

I am searching for a stone child. My eyes are ignorant, and only my hands know the shape. I find it, just a stone, but wrapped in a rainbow cloth. I am supposed to hold this hard thing against my body, until it can grow warm.

I'm walking, and the stone is heavy, so I use the long cloth to wrap it to my front. I am in a place, like a forest, that is neither daylit nor night, walking with the stone, and the cloth of many colors, bright as the dew. A spotted owl flies above me and I walk in its shadow, here between the trees.

* * *

_A/N: Most heartfelt thanks to averysubtlegift for being the best and most patient beta I could ever wish for. This chapter went through NINE revisions, mostly because I am OCD and insecure. Deep thank you also to geo3 for the right question at the right time. I would still be obsessing instead of posting right now, if not for her. Last and most far from least, thank you to every one of you who reads, alerts, favorites, or reviews. You make the writing not a lonely process. Thank you._

* * *

_I almost forgot: here are some of the pictures that Bella found to put in her scrap-book:_

_The Christmas Truce:_

_ movehimintothesun . files . wordpress 2011/01/trucemirror2 . jpg  
_

_(Here is another touching picture, with the story. To think that they started shooting at each other after that always breaks my heart. __ anniemayhem wordpress/?p=1262 )_

_The pretty crop-haired girls:_

_ www . history . /photos/images/h81000/h81543k . jpg  
_

_ www . clarkegalleries posters/images/gee_i_wish_i_were_a_man_lg . jpg_

_The shovel brigades:_

_ www . hellorockford images/people/4222005rockford_n069735 . jpg_

_An old style clothes wringer:_

_ www . handsontauranga . /Pics/1487,4,1,6,4,0/Clothes-Wringer-HC111 . jpeg_

_(The clamps at the bottom attach it to the washing tub)_

_Men's formal wear of Edward's time:_

_ : / / www . periodpaper media/catalog/product/cache/1/image//O/D/OD1_120_1 . JPG_

_ : / / www . flickr photos/charmainezoe/5357368515/lightbox/_


	36. Poppies

**Poppies**

They've found the snowboarder. Or parts of her, anyway. I heard about it at school today. I should just let it be, but I can't. I remember the day I was sick, and Edward's peace offering, and my dad coming home late, and his K9 officer up in the mountains.

I remember the dream of the mountain lion that had started that whole long day. I've been dreaming a lot since I came to Forks.

I probably shouldn't bring up dead girls at the dinner table, but that's where these things seem to happen.

"The kids at school were talking about the snowboarder girl."

My dad puts down his fork. "Yeah," he grunts; then picks up his fork and starts eating again.

"I guess it's good that at least they found her …"

He stops eating for real now, and looks at me. "She was from out of state. Came to visit with a bunch of friends. Her parents have been here since she disappeared."

I can't even imagine what that they're feeling, with the search ending like this.

"The kids are saying – " I don't know how to put it, don't know if I even want to, but somehow I have to. "They're saying it was … bad."

"Animals are hungry in winter, Bells. A body in the snow isn't going to stay in one piece for very long."

The meat on my plate isn't in one piece either.

"Do they think it's the same … "

My dad's brow gets all pinched. He had _seen_ that body. The security guard. The day I almost died. The kids were saying that was really gross, too.

"Too soon to go jumping to conclusions. But a bear can cover a lot of territory."

"I thought they hibernated during the winter."

"S'posed to. But if an animal is sick, or has a broken tooth … and people leaving food and garbage out like damn fools. If a bear doesn't get fat enough in the fall, and if there's food around to lure him in … the rules change, Bells. They change."

"Was there like … blood?" The smashed deer wavers up from the dark in my mind. The first thing I had seen on my way into Forks.

"Not a whole lot. Coroner thinks she died of exposure. The rest came … after."

I read an article in one of my dad's magazines once, about what it's like to freeze to death. They say you feel warm in the end.

"You okay, Bells?"

I must have gotten up from the table, because my dad is up, too, and standing next to me.

"I'm – "

"C'mere." And he's hugging me. With both arms. Hard. "You kids just stay out of the woods, you hear?"

"Okay."

He gestures toward the dinner table. "I got this, Bells. You go do your homework."

* * *

It used to be that I would lose myself in my homework. Tangents and secants. Midsummer night's dreams.

Now it's Edward's journal. I can hear ESPN still drifting up faintly from the den. I wonder if my dad has fallen asleep. He does that sometimes.

…

_May 1st, 1918_

_Mr. McGillicudy is dead. It's taken more than six months for them to get word to his family. His mortal remains, such as they were by the time they'd been sorted out from the mud and all the others, lie buried somewhere near Passchendaele. All that his family got back was the identification tag from around his neck. Even his boots went to another soldier, since they'd been barely used._

_Headmaster told us all about it at morning assembly today. We held a moment of silence and then Mr. Clayton read us a poem._

_It's so hard to believe. It's not even a year ago that old Gills resigned to join up. I wonder now that we called him that. He was only 27. He went into the Canadian Corps, because that's where he's from, originally. That's why he was at the salient at Passchendaele, instead of behind the lines with our own men._

_He gave us the hardest Geometry exam of our lives before he left._

…

I learn that Passchendaele was in Flanders, which, according to Google, is somewhere in Belgium. A map shows me where. Europe is small. Everything is close to everything else. This battlefield is barely across the Channel from England.

There's a link to a poem about Flanders Fields.

"_In Flanders Fields the poppies blow_

_Between the crosses row on row,_

_That mark our place; and in the sky_

_The larks, still bravely singing, fly_

_Scarce heard amid the guns below._

_We are the Dead. Short days ago_

_We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,_

_Loved and were loved, and now we lie_

_In Flanders fields._

_Take up our quarrel with the foe:_

_To you from failing hands we throw_

_The torch; be yours to hold it high._

_If ye break faith with us who die_

_We shall not sleep, though poppies grow_

_In Flanders fields."_

I don't think I want to read any more, tonight. I don't want to copy the poem into the scrapbook. It might not be the one that was read at the assembly. But I can find a picture of poppies instead. So red. Suddenly it flashes to me the meaning of the little red flower thing that the old soldiers hand out on Veteran's Day, to put in your buttonhole or on your bag. Nobody ever told me what it meant before. Only this Edward from long ago.

I find a good picture and cut out the red flowers with my exacto-knife and paste them onto the white page.

ESPN is still droning softly downstairs, and the Google page in front of me is full of links. I should leave it be, but I don't.

Battles took a long time in those days. The battle at Passchendaele began on July 31, 1917 and didn't end until the tenth of November. Nobody even knows for sure how many men died there. No wonder it took so long to get word back to that teacher's family.

The pictures are small and incomplete, black and white snapshots of the cramped muddy trenches, or small groups going 'over the top,' bayonets gripped in their hands. To meet artillery. I think of what a wider lens would show … miles of land littered with bodies, men hung upon the barbed wire … and it takes me back to the beginning of the night, and a girl in bloodless pieces, strewn across the snow like a broken wax doll.

* * *

_Thank you for reading._


	37. Valentine

**Valentine**

It's Valentine's Day already. Tyler is back in school. His face looks a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle, but the stitches are all out, and the doctors are saying the scars will hardly be visible after a year. The kids say it was Dr. Cullen who sewed him up.

I saw that Lauren got a single red rose in her locker this morning. It's from Tyler, of course. It's all curled up in a bud, but the stem is in a little bulb of water. Over the next few days it will gradually open for her. That's a really meaningful gift. She tries to blow it off with her tough-girl attitude, but I bet she's happy inside.

Jessica got a box of chocolates from Mike. He's taking her to the dance this Saturday, and she's ecstatic. She let me choose first when she shared all the chocolate around in advisory. She fed one to Mike with her hand, which made him pretty happy, too.

My locker is empty, except for my books and parka.

I had thought of slipping a card into Edward's locker, to at least thank him for the journal or something, but I chickened out. I need to give him something, though, I just haven't figured out what. Maybe … maybe the scrapbook. I've been making it for myself, but … maybe he might like it, maybe even want to keep it. I would like that, even more than keeping it for myself.

The cafeteria is serving cupcakes with pink icing and red-hot cinnamon hearts on top.

People have stopped talking about the dead girl.

They're talking about Jasper instead.

He's been gone a week, now. It's a big deal, especially since Emmett was gone too until yesterday. And then there was Edward's week-plus absence after my awful first day. I guess none of the Cullen kids were ever absent for so many days in a row before, especially since the weather has just been its old, cloudy drizzly self all along. The teachers aren't saying anything, but the kids sure are.

About how the Cullens are falling apart. How you can't keep a bunch of reject foster kids together in a family for long. How they're bound to have problems and issues, and they probably had to move here from Alaska because the kids got into trouble there, too.

I don't know why everyone likes to talk about this, even more than the snowboarder girl. She was old news in two days. Maybe because she's dead and that's that. With the Cullens, nobody knows for real what is going on, so everyone has a theory.

Jessica is telling everybody that Jasper got Alice pregnant and Dr. Cullen had to give her an abortion and Jasper got sent away to reform school. That doesn't really explain why Emmett was absent, though.

Brendan says Dr. Cullen is secretly performing experiments on the kids, and the Emmett who came back is a clone. Shelley hits him for that, because she doesn't want anyone bad-mouthing Dr. Cullen. But he's pretty pleased, because she used to ignore him completely.

It feels like the first day of school all over again. Or when Edward was absent. I don't want to even ask questions. I just keep my head down and eat.

Angela nudges me. "You okay?"

"I'm good."

"There has to be a good reason. Not this bunko stuff everyone is saying."

Thank you, Angela.

She's talking in a normal voice, but very softly. Whispering would just get everyone's attention.

"Maybe Jasper had to go and get an operation. You know, for his heart."

I glance over to their table – still off in a corner by the windows. And still no one sitting there except them. They still look like a picture, but with a piece missing. Again.

"Emmett probably went to keep him company, so he wouldn't be alone when he came out of surgery."

I wonder why Dr. Cullen didn't operate on him. Maybe he can't. His own kid. Even if only adopted. Who could do that? Open heart surgery. They use this round saw like in a lumber mill, only small enough for a human body. They saw through your breastbone and crack your whole chest wide open. My mom used to watch weird stuff like that on T.V. I didn't want to be alone in my room so I watched it with her.

I wonder if that's what happened to Jasper. Why didn't Alice go to stay with him, then? Why Emmett?

I glance at their table again. Alice looks really sad and worried. She closes her eyes a lot. Does that mean Jasper's not doing well? Rosalie just looks angry. Rosalie pretty much always looks angry. But ever since Jasper's been absent, she's taken anger face to a whole new level. Maybe being angry feels better than being scared. Jasper is her real brother. Maybe the only family she has.

The day just drags and drags. I see Mike with his arm slung over Jessica's shoulders the whole time. Would that have been me if I had said yes when he asked me to the dance? Jessica is still saying that Edward stares at me. I never see it. I'm beginning to think she made it up all along.

And then I remember everything that is hidden in my bed.

His arms around me, and the shower of broken glass.

I don't know. I don't know anything any more. I don't even know if he likes girls. He doesn't look at me. He doesn't speak to me. But he has put strange things on my porch, and on my bookshelf. And my grandma's rocking chair still smells like him. What is it that is between us then? Is it nothing? Or is it the love of angels, which exists only in the spirit? And does it make me happy? Or does it make me sad? Today, on Valentine's Day.

After school I go into town to do some shopping. We had some really good lasagna at the diner last week and I want to see if I can make it myself. As I'm wandering through the aisles wondering which ricotta is better, whole milk or skim, I realize there is something else I want to do.

I don't really know where the churches are in town. My dad doesn't really go to church. He goes fishing instead. I only remember there is a Catholic church, not far from the hospital. I head out that way, after all the groceries are stowed on the seat next to me.

Passing a patch of trees, I hit a pothole with an unholy CLUNK. This is not good. I have to keep this truck in good shape for Jacob. It's my red monster, and my responsibility, until it's time to give it back.

I pull over and get out to check the wheels and undercarriage. I don't see anything obvious. I don't remember any potholes in this part of the road before, but with all the rain and ice, I guess that could change. The tarp is rumpled and covering the truck bed. I get back inside and start up again, listening and feeling for anything wrong as I roll forward back onto the road. The engine rumbles like always; the shocks are bouncy-stiff like always; the steering feels fine. I think I'm safe.

After a few wrong turns I find St. Ann's Catholic church. Forks is not just a small town, it's kind of a poor town. The church is small and built in a weird, boxy shape with a concrete apron in front, vertical vinyl clapboards all in white, and big black doors. I don't see any stained glass anywhere. There is not a soul in sight, although there are one or two cars in the parking lot. My truck looks like a red behemoth beside them.

The shopping had taken longer than I expected and it's already almost dusk. It's going to be dark by the time I'm done here. I suddenly worry, what if the doors are locked? It's a Wednesday. Do they even open on a Wednesday?

The big black door is heavy, but it isn't locked, and so I go in. Inside is dim, with most of the light coming from the windows behind the choir balcony. The walls are painted white, and it looks almost more like a meeting hall than a church. But there's an altar in front, and over on the side I find what I'm looking for: a little table with a rack for candles, and a small crucifix on the wall above it.

For a minute I panic and think I should have brought my own candle, but then I see the little tray of votives beside the rack. I don't really know how to do this, but I'm committed, now, and so I look for some place to leave an offering. There's a wooden box with a slit in the top. I put a dollar in. I see there is a Bic lighter on the table there. The candle rack looks very forlorn. All the other candles on it are long ago burned out. The one that I am lighting will be all alone. I put it in the middle of the rack, and then I get down on my knees.

I cross myself, though I'm not sure I've ever done it before, and put my hands together. The lone flame of the candle wavers. It's very beautiful and golden in the dimness. Above is the holy tree, and the one who sacrificed himself.

I talk to God in the flame and on the tree.

_Please take care of Jasper. Hold him like you hold the sparrows._

_Please take care of Alice and Rosalie, too. Don't let them be afraid or alone._

I close my eyes and breathe, and ask for God to be close to the Cullens, and to everyone in need.

It's peaceful here, and I let myself stay for a little while. Then it's time to say thank you, and amen.

I pick myself up, and out of the corner of my eye I think I see a flash of shadow. A sound, like a breath of wind. I look behind me, to where the doors are. Nothing. No sound, either.

"Hello?"

No answer.

Was it the pastor? Or just a trick of the light.

It's dark outside now, like I knew it would be. I smell incense, like roses and some kind of spice, as I walk through the door.

* * *

Hurricane Ridge. Again. It's Rosalie's idea this time.

"You need to hunt," she hisses, as we walk from our last class out to the parking lot. "Look at you."

And I see my coal-black irises both through her sight and reflected from her corneas. I've been hunting far more frequently than any of my family members, but with Isabella in school every day, and me haunting her bedroom every night, I am in a state of perpetual thirst.

"You're a danger to all of us like this."

Rosalie is right. But I cannot stay away from Bella.

Alice has been searching piteously for a future in which Jasper returns to her. I don't believe anything that she has seen, and I don't think she does either. It all looks too much like wishful thinking. I tell her not to try so hard, to let it come by itself, though God knows I wish as hard as she does for his return and reconciliation.

With Jasper's whereabouts unknown, I have been … uneasy.

I shadow and track Bella all day through the eyes of her classmates, grasp at stray glimpses of that red truck in townspeople's eyes when she is in transit, suffer through the time when I must leave her alone to hunt, and finally stake vigil at her window each night. She has been staying up inordinately late these evenings, poring over my old journal. So long as her light is on, I am kept at bay in the tree outside, barely daring to peek around from time to time. Though I cannot see what page she reads, just the knowing that my journal is in her hands, under her eyes, makes my insides shiver and ache. It's almost worse than the thirst.

When her light goes out, I wait for her breathing to settle into the rhythms of sleep, and then, wretched creature that I am, I creep in at the window and take my place in the rocking chair. There is no pretense of protecting her, then. In such close proximity, surrounded by her scent and her breath and her heartbeat, _I_ am the greatest danger to her. And yet I cannot help myself. I cannot leave until the sky begins to lighten, until her father begins to stir. It's insane and it's dangerous. And I do it every night.

Today my siblings have corralled me into a group expedition. I see in their minds how disturbed they are by my behavior these weeks. That is _all_ that I see whenever I am with my family. I have become their problem child. Do they wonder that I spend all my time away, haunting Bella? And yet, isn't that very action the source of all their worried thoughts?

There are only four of us, and so we all crowd into Emmett's jeep. No way am I taking my Volvo on that road if I don't have to. We have to keep the canopy on, since it is far too cold still for humans to drive with open top. The morass of everyone's thoughts under the closed space is stifling.

Alice's eyes are closed. She is searching again for her reunion with Jasper. I am not the only one who is obsessed. That fact is no comfort to me at all.

Piece by piece, yet another variation of the scene forms in Alice's head, built by her desire.

"_I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean – "_

"_Shhh, shhhhh, hush you now, it's all right. I can __**feel**__, remember? You'd never wish me harm; I know that. You're not her."_

_She climbs into his lap and clings to him. He rocks her. "My little blackbird. You're just a little greedy, is all. Wantin' another sister." He smiles his long, slow smile and brushes her hair back so he can kiss her temple. _

The intimacy embarrasses me, small though it is. And yet I feel such a pang of longing.

"_I can't blame you," he murmurs, lips against her skin. "It's in all of our natures to be greedy."_

"_She's going to love you, too, Jasper. I've seen it. She's going to love all of us, not just Edward. She's a nice girl."_

"_She's human, Alice."_

"_I know."_

"_You're just playin' with fire. You and Edward both."_

The light of her inner sight gutters. We both know that what she has seen is far more wish than vision.

_I'm sorry, Edward. I'm so sorry. I didn't know what to do. I __**had**__ to stop him. I couldn't let him do what I saw … I had to do __**something**__._

I close my eyes, too. I don't want to answer her. I don't want to be overheard; and really, what is there to say? She goes back forlornly to her visioning, and I can't help but wonder if she isn't trying to _create_ the future out of her wishes, and place it like a lodestone out in the ether, to pull us all toward it. Is that even possible? And if it is, what does it mean about all our destinies? Do we _all_ do that to ourselves, as Rudolf Steiner thought?

The trees whiz past even in the steeply rising switchbacks as we approach our goal. Emmett is not sparing the horses at all, and he is relying on me to warn if there is any approach of the law. His mind is on Jasper, too, as he drives: how he saw the lay of Jasper's trail and made a guess; how he ran and swam straight across from Bremerton to Redmond, then cast out eastward, back and forth, back and forth, in ever-widening arcs, until he'd finally caught up with Jasper in the wilds of the Wenatchee.

Jasper had been surprised to see him, but not displeased.

"_I ain't got no talent, but I got dog sense."_

They both had chuckled at that, then sat and parlayed for a while.

"_I'm heading up Canada way," Jasper says. "Hear there's a park up there named after me." The corner of his mouth lifts in a wry smile. "They say the elk up there are fat."_

"_How long ye reckon ye'll stay?"_

"_Long enough, I 'spect."_

"_Yer girl is pinin' fer ye."_

"_I know."_

_And then he's gone. So fast that the air nearly pops with his passing. A trail of swirled snow follows his path. _

I see Emmett's memory of himself turning back for home. He believes Jasper. I am not so sure.

Already we have left the jeep far behind. The terrain is different today than it was on our last hunt here. The snow is denser and wetter. Thick ice glazes portions that have been lit by sun during the day. We course just below the ridgeline, senses spread for sheep or mule deer or elk or anything else that might cross our path, and all I can think of is finishing this as quickly as possible and getting back to Bella. I hate being this far away, this far out of range. Suspended between Emmett's memory and Alice's vision, I feel fear gnawing and twisting inside my thirst … and the memory of her scent.

Only Rosalie's mind is focused on the hunt itself, and it is she who spies the sheep herd first. They are downwind of us, on the slope below. As soon as our gaze touches them, they bleat and run in panic. I recognize them. It is the same group we had walked down a month ago. Their luck has ended today. We are among them in seconds, bringing them down two apiece, crippling, biting, drinking. Killing.

I have set my mouth into the second ewe when I see it: a real vision, bursting and blossoming in Alice's mind as she gulps the blood from her ram's heaving neck.

It's Jasper.

_He is leaping into the bed of Bella's truck, as she passes a patch of trees. The movement is too fast for any human eye to see, but sound and jostling at his impact are inevitable._

"Alice!"

I've already jumped off of my sheep and onto her. Rosalie and Emmett are quick to grapple me to the ground. The vision spools out before Alice's eyes and mine.

_Jasper conceals himself under a tarp on the truck bed, as Bella pulls over to stop. He lulls and dulls her concern as she inspects the wheels and the back, so that she notices nothing amiss in the shape of the wet canvas that covers him._

When? _When?_ Is this today? Tomorrow? A week from now? Frantically I analyze the light angles in the scene. If it is today it is only minutes away from beginning.

"He's in town! He's hunting her!"

"No!" Alice curls into a ball and blanks her mind.

I fight my way back onto her. "Show me!"

"Don't force me to see!"

Images leak.

_St. Ann's church, by the hospital. Bella disappearing inside. Jasper slipping in behind her._

I have to get to her.

"Stop him!" Alice screams, as _everything_ is obliterated by Jasper and me locked in deadly combat, the screeching sound of limbs tearing, the sickly scent of venom pouring from sundered flesh, humans drawn to the noise, Jasper's head rolling down two shallow cement steps.

Alice wails and wraps herself around my legs; Rosalie and Emmett pile on with her. No matter how I fight and squirm and bite they curl me into their clutches. I drag them a mile and a half before they find the holds that immobilize me completely. Rosalie and Emmett are cursing. Alice is sobbing. I twist with all my strength under the bodies that pin me, but all I can do is grind my own face into the corn sugar snow.

The vision of me killing Jasper flickers out. Instead I see him snatch Bella as she walks out through the big black door of the church.

_He wants no suffering for her, remembers what Alice had seen before, and so gives her a single blow with the back of his fist to her forehead. It is night already. No one sees him drive away in her truck. She lies across his lap. Two bags of groceries have spilled out on the passenger side floor._

"Let me go! Let me _go_!" Three vampires, only three, are enough to render me helpless.

Alice is weeping in horrible dry heaves. Suddenly a vision of Jasper returning to her flashes in perfect tableau. "Please, please!" she gasps.

This is no wish or dream. This is truth, stark and clear, as she flies to him and holds him tight. The other vision, of Bella's death, overlaps.

_Jasper has a greater horror of fire than any of us, and so, though the gas tank is indeed full and would burn all evidence to cinders, he drives to the coast instead. _

"Let me go! _Please!_ Let me go!_"_ I'm begging, now. What else can I do?

Alice can barely say the word, "No."

Rosalie and Emmett obey her grimly. "It's fer the best. It's got to be; ye'll see."

They both know what Alice is doing. She is putting Jasper above Bella. Bartering Bella's life to bring her mate back. Having killed Bella he will return. He owes Carlisle that, at least. And then he will learn what Alice did. And the rift between them will be healed. The vision of his return strengthens, brightens, settles into fact with every second that they hold me down.

_He is filled with sorrow and chagrin as he holds Alice to him. "Oh my darling, what I cost you! All for my foolish pride."_

"_It's all right," she answers._

"_You brought me to this family. I have to keep them safe, keep __**you**__ safe …"_

"_I know."_

Intertwined with Jasper's return is the sacrifice.

_The bruise from Bella's crushed forehead is spreading down her face. Though her higher functions are gone, her heart still beats. The scent of her blood leaks thickly through the battered skin. Jasper curses it, curses me for all the single-minded lust he has absorbed from me, and which now, with her blood in his nostrils, he can no longer endure. He cradles her up against his chest._

"_I'm so sorry, Miss Bella."_

_The skin of her throat opens beneath his teeth._

Alice's mind reels in my head at this sight, but her whole body clamps around me with desperate strength.

_I'm sorry Edward! We __**need**__ Jasper. We __**need**__ him. __**I**__ need him …_

The vision is flickering erratically – as happens when the present catches up to the future_. _

_Isabella's body is wrapped in the canvas tarp. Jasper whirls the bundle like a hammer-throw, and sends her sailing far, far, far out to sea._

There are orca in these waters. The mark of his bite will be obliterated.

_He pushes the red truck through the guardrail and over the cliff to the tide below._

It's over. There is nothing now. Only the four of us tangled in a knot. My vision goes black. As if at a very great distance I hear Alice tell the others to let me up. She sees me running. Running south and east. Running away.

But not yet. I lie where they had held me.

"What now?" Rosalie asks.

"We need to scatter the carcasses." Eight dead sheep in one place is too much to chance being found, and too much for wolves or other scavengers to dispose of quickly. Even the rogue bear would not eat that much in one feeding. There are tracks to obscure, as well.

I haven't moved, and all of them are worried. Though Rosalie and Emmett have not _seen_ as Alice and I have, they know well enough what has happened. Emmett kneels and puts a hand on my shoulder.

"Edward, git up and come with us."

"Don't touch me!" I roar, springing to a crouch. "All of you! Leave me alone!"

They step back. Alice is shaking. Their minds are bare to me, and never have I wished so much that I did not have this gift.

"None of us feel good about this, Edward," Rosalie scolds. "You know that. None of us had any quarrel with her. It's just shit luck. The whole thing is shit luck from start to finish." Her voice and face soften. "But you have to go on. We all just have to go on."

"Just leave me alone."

They look to Alice. She nods. They gather the dead sheep and skim away over the snow.

"Come home when you're done, Edward."

Their voices echo behind them.

"Come home."

"Come home."

I'm alone. Night fell as they were holding me down. A thin veil of cloud shimmers above, reflecting the white and red ground.

I run.


	38. Pavane for a Dead Girl

**Pavane for a Dead Girl**

I run.

I don't even know where I am.

South and east.

That's what Alice saw.

All that I can see is the trees, whipping past my eyes. Each one crystal clear, every branch, every pine needle, snapping by at nearly the speed of sound. I am like the thunder chasing the lightning. I have to slow down or I will burn a path from here to Idaho that might even be visible from space.

As my steps slacken, the images overtake me.

Oh, Bella.

Curled under quilts that are too thin, that do not keep her warm enough.

Writing there at her desk in the front of the class, cheek resting on one hand, hair spilling down and hiding everything from me.

Crouched in front of her locker. The small sigh. Her forehead on her knees. Angela was so kindly disposed toward her. If she had only lived she might have found a true friend in that retiring girl.

Every stolen moment rolls over me in waves, each memory like a mote of water in the flood.

Flinching away from the volleyball because she doesn't know how to position herself to bump it back.

Her feet like twin doves. My journal on her pillow.

That fragrant, forbidden land that I stole through another's eyes.

In the forest, twined upon the fir tree, under the falling rain.

The pulse of her arteries that will haunt me forever – throat, hollows of collarbones, crooks of elbows and knees, her wrists, her ankles – thrumming and sending her scent, each one a cup calling me to drink.

The yellow handprint of a doomed child fells me at last, and I lie in the loam with my forever-silent chest.

_None of that evil has happened, and I vow it never will, not so long as any part of me is not ash._

What a pitiful and pathetic joke. It _has_ happened. And no part of me is ash. Three. Three is all it took to hold me down. Three, and my promise is broken.

Her forehead, smashed inward. All of her thoughts gone forever. Thoughts that I have never known. Now will never know. Swept into darkness by a raven's wing.

I lie where I am, as I had collapsed and lain where they left me, their thoughts and their footsteps receding away.

It swirls around me now, in the stillness under an unfamiliar forest.

Alice was a mess. Past visions roiled with her most recent ones, a black storm filling her mind. I don't even know how she could do what she had to, to hide the magnitude of our kill. Yet she lugged the two sheep, one under each arm, and kept on running, down-slope and into the trees. The only thought I could hear from her was Jasper's name: chanting, calling, pleading through the flashing dark.

Emmett and Rosalie went their own way, holding each other with glances, since their hands, too, were completely occupied with carcasses.

_Oh Alice, what've ye done? Ye've sacrificed far more than just Bella to keep your mate safe. And yet, what could ye do? And what's to become of us now?_

Through his eyes I saw his glance to Rosalie, and hers back to him.

_Carlisle's always loved Edward best of all. Him and Esme both._

Glance.

_I'll not leave ye, Rose. Nothing will ever take me from ye._

Glance again. And privately wondering if our family is now to split into two camps, or three.

His cogitations were deliberate and heavy. How Jasper had lied to him, had made him bear false report. _I cain't abide that. I jest cain't. _

I wonder if Alice has seen the split by now. Three pairs going their separate ways. She and Jasper, Em and Rose, Carlisle and Esme. Does anyone seriously think that I can ever be part of this family again?

_Ain't right what ye done, brother. That girl ain't never wished a body harm. Ye think ye're the only one been keepin' watch? Me an' Rose – all this time, she ain't breathed a word of Edward stoppin' the van, nor 'ary a whisper of his journal. Ain't Alice already seen that she never will? Ye're too suspicious. Carryin' your past around inside, 'til ye cain't see what's standin' in front of ye._

Glance again.

Rosalie's thoughts, rushing parallel to his as they ran side by side, surprised me.

_She was doomed from the time he first smelled her. If not by him then by one of us; if not for her blood then for this – for being an apple of discord. Poor girl, she never had a chance. _

Rosalie is wrong. Bella was not doomed from the time I first smelled her. She was doomed from the moment she decided to come to Forks. From the moment _we_ decided to come to Forks.

I roll onto my back and gaze upward. Wherever I am, I have run out from under the clouds. The forest is mixed deciduous here, and the bare branches make a black lace against the bottomless sky. Stars poke through, like little arrows to my eyes, and I cannot help but wonder if Bella's fate wasn't set from the moment these lights aligned against her at her birth.

I hate Jasper! Hate Alice! Enacting this passion play of theirs, of who loves whom the most! What right do they have? And why should Bella have to be sacrificed to something so childish and petty? How can her life be set at such little worth?

I want to kill those two, kill them both. It will never happen. I was no match for three tonight, how can I do anything when the whole family will unite against me?

I close my eyes, and Alice's vision of my fight with Jasper replays in my mind. As I saw when my treacherous siblings were holding me down, he stands just outside the church's door.

_Bella is as warm as life in his arms, but her heart is stilled forever. Hearing, smelling, __**feeling**__ me coming, Jasper has finished her hastily with a second blow to her chest. I hear the silence, see her ruined form, smell her blood, and launch myself forward. _

Lying here in quietude, I see the moment more clearly this time. There was never any deadly combat. Just me, tearing Jasper apart. He did not fight back. He accepted death for doing what he felt was necessary to guard the family.

The family won't allow that, now. Alice won't. She didn't save him from me tonight, didn't sacrifice Bella for him like that, only to have me rip him to shreds when I return. And in her presence he won't be able to not fight for his own life either. Her pain is his pain. Her fear is his fear. With her feelings flooding through him he will defend himself against me.

In real life, a real fight, I am no match for him. He is by far the deadliest among us. He fights dirty. And he eviscerates his enemies with their own emotions. I've seen what he did for Maria. Reading his mind to know his next move only lays me wider open to his gift.

Even without the family's help, Jasper is safe now. Alice has assured it.

* * *

The shafts of starlight prick at my eyes. In the time since I fell down where I lie, they have traversed barely an arc minute across the spaces between the trees. All these tangled skeins of memory and thought have passed through my head in that tiny span. Such is the speed of our unnatural minds. It only makes our eternity longer.

I imagine the stars in their arcs, whirling around the pole star.

I see the image of Bella's body, hidden in the canvas shroud, whirling around Jasper as he spins to throw her, then sailing so far, so _far_, out over the black water.

I gulp in air and it shudders out of me again. Over and over without relief. The closest I can come to weeping. No matter what Jasper and Alice have done, all of this is _my_ fault. Mine. One silly moment of ridiculous foolish pride, not wanting my family to hear me leave and then return and then leave again. None of this train wreck would have happened, _none_ of it, if I had only put my journal –

My journal.

Still there. In her room. Under her mattress. That's where she hides it.

Jasper won't leave it in her house to be discovered. He is probably there already, waiting for the chance to steal it.

No!

No! No! _No! _

It's mine! Her scent upon it – is _mine!_ He has already taken Bella from the world. He has no right to lay hands on this last thing in the world that she has touched!

I am up and running. Back. Back to her house. Jasper had better not be there. Or if he is, he had better yield to me. This thing is mine. This relic of all that I am no more. This weapon with which I killed her. That she held every night like a lover in her arms, saturating it with herself.

I don't see the land I am running over. I only see myself. Decades from now, a century, more. Hoarding over the tattered remains. Leather finally dry and cracked. Pages yellow and disintegrating. Ink barely legible even to my eyes. Her scent gone, long gone. Like that of the boy who died. Did her scent find his? In that better place? Or is there nothing left but the empty wind?

Run back, run back. Back to the scene of the crime. Back to the quiet place that will ache in my thoughts from now on. Take back the cause of it all – too late, too late. Too late for anything but my own grief.

* * *

_Thank you for reading._


	39. Fly Away Home

_Lost and gone forever in Stephenie's forest ..._

* * *

**Fly Away Home**

I am running. Running to Bella's house. I will be there very soon. I want to be there right now. But I don't. I don't

Oh, Bella.

I'm getting close; I have to slow down. I can hear her father's thoughts. He is watching television. How is this possible? Doesn't he care that his daughter isn't home yet?

I think of where she _is_. Perhaps already in pieces. There are sharks as well as orca in those waters. I can't bear it. I stop, doubled over.

I can't. I can't stop here in the woods. I have to press forward. If Jasper is there first; if he lays a hand on my journal ... Oh, God, what a mess that will be! The two of us fighting. Chief Swan will probably have to die, too. What a mess. How did everything get to be such a mess?

I creep up behind the house; see the television flickering blue through the sitting room window, its blathering drone filling my ears with cruel indifference. Does he not even _wonder_ why his daughter is still out? It's past dark.

So long past dark.

Bella's scent still hangs about the house, as does the scent of that monstrosity of a truck. I inhale them both, and it hurts.

There is light at the side of the house. The light in her bedroom is on. I don't understand it. Why would her father turn on her light? Or did she forget to turn it off before she left home in the morning?

The thought of the light, burning in her window, with her never to return … I double over again.

There's no sign of Jasper anywhere, no scent, no sound, no thought. I can't put this off. I scale the tree without a sound, just like always, and look in at her window.

And she is there.

She is right there.

Lying on her stomach, reading my journal, with her tender, lovely feet in the air, her sweet, slender ankles, and her pajama legs sagged down around her calves.

Oh, Bella.

I just stare. What can I do? I drink in the sight of her. Something must have changed. I don't even care what. What does it even matter? Right now … here she is. Safe.

Safe.

Safe and sound, with my journal and some sort of art homework spread out on her bed.

I stare like a dead man at this girl who is alive. Don't move. Don't move. Don't crash through the window and clasp her to my breast. Don't shake this tree I am hiding in to pieces.

Just look and thank God and don't move.

The printer on her desk starts to clack and grind and I see her move to get up from the bed. I make myself invisible behind the trunk of the tree.

She is puttering. I hear papers shuffling, the scratch of an exacto-knife, her fingertip sliding and clicking on the navigation pad of her laptop. In between it all she turns the pages of my journal one at a time, reading in silence except for her breath and heartbeat and an occasional sigh.

I feel a little jealous that she divides her attention between my journal and some school project. How wrong of me that is! I should only be grateful that she is alive.

None of that evil has happened.

_And I still have a chance to make sure that it never will._

I settle in. Even though I am hiding behind the trunk of the tree, _she_ is here. Right here.

Her heartbeat. Her blood.

God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.

* * *

It's past one in the morning, and finally, finally she is asleep. I can go in to her now. As I have done every night. Thanks to my dastardly resourcefulness, the window slides without the slightest sound_._

I take my place in the chair, and stare.

If I had a soul, I would send it to lie down beside her.

Oh, happy ghost.

Under the covers, Isabella sleeps, swimming through her world of dreams.

She is alive, she is whole, she is completely unaware of the shadow of death that has dogged her every footstep – even here, here to the private space of her own bedroom.

I let the minutes and hours slip by, using the physical sight of her to wash my mind of every horrible future I saw this night. I remind myself not to rock in the chair, not to even breathe.

Layer by layer the grievous images are wiped away, until I feel clean again. Myself again.

This is the gift of her silence.

Which I take, ever so greedily, with both hands.

The night drifts, marked by the metronome of her heart.

I can't stay.

I want to. Lord knows I do. In this girl's presence, I am finally at peace. I feel safe. I am happy. I don't want to go back to my family, to school, to all of the things that all of us will have to do tomorrow to hide what we are, to act as if nothing unusual has happened in the past twenty-four hours, to account to the school authorities for Jasper's return. I'm sure he has returned, now. Alice saw it.

The sky is black, and the stars are covered by clouds, but the moment comes when I can feel the planet turning toward morning.

I think of kidnapping Bella and going someplace far away, just her and me. I fantasize a little cottage in the woods, like some tale from Hans Christian Anderson. I would hunt for the two of us, the blood for me and the meat for her.

I imagine some good-hearted fairy waving a wand, transporting me and this girl into the blank pages at the end of my journal, to live out in that unwritten country the life that I should have had. The thought of that is too excruciating to bear, and I have to shut down.

I don't even know if she likes me.

How could she, really? After the things that I've said.

Never mind what I _am_.

Chief Swan is restless tonight. He will wake up early, I'm sure of it. I can't stay. There are words that will need to be said with my family. Even though Bella is safe and sound, nothing can be the same now. The thought frightens me. I wonder what Alice is seeing.

The image of us all, trooping off to school in three hours, pretending to be human, swims surreal in my mind like a scene from _Un Chien Andalou_. Is that sham even possible for us now?

Minutes pass, and still I sit, knees to chin like a gargoyle, here on Bella's rocking chair.

This room, this heartbeat, the susurrations of her breath, her sleeping form, the odd mumbled words – I wrap them around me. I don't want to let go.

I think of the other place where I had found peace. _She belongs there …_

Even the scent of her blood, as much as it hurts, and it _does_ hurt, has become so familiar to me. I don't want to let _it_ go, either.

It breaks every possible law of decency to visit her like this, every night, hovering over her like some great, dark bird. My thirst to drink her has not changed. It never will. It is part of me. It is what I am. There is no pretending possible about that.

I don't want to leave, but I must.

And so, in the end, I do.

* * *

I retrieve my car at the school, and drive home at the very limits of the machine's capabilities. Our driveway, the tall trees, the verdant lawn, Esme's gardens and the glass walls that look out upon them – everything is exactly as it was when we all left, now yesterday morning. Valentine's Day. Jasper was going to kill her on Valentine's Day.

They are waiting for me, of course. Alice had seen my return. It is the dining room again, of course. I go to them. What else am I to do?

Everyone is here. Jasper as well. I think of the last time we all assembled around this table – was it really only thirteen days ago? All the things that I and Alice – and all of us, really – tried to do, to keep the future from falling off a cliff.

I sold Bella to keep the family together.

Yet here we are, splintered and raw, just the same.

Alice sold Jasper to keep him from harming Bella.

And Jasper hunted Bella down, just the same.

Can it be that there really ever is only one future? And all the alternates that Alice sees, that seem to be predicated on decisions in the present, all of that is just distraction, illusion, decoys? Is there really only the one destiny, pulling us forward step by step, and free will is the fairy tale?

I see in everyone's minds that they have already hashed out yesterday's events with each other, already come to accommodations for what was done, and what was not done. Returning now, as the sky outside starts to pale, once again I am the odd man out. How did this happen? I was Carlisle's first. His only, for a time. That was the only thing that had made my absurd new "life" bearable. What I was, and meant, to him. The bond between us.

Jasper catches my resistance and refrains from interfering with my feelings. He knows he'd better not! But Esme flies to me and wraps me in her arms.

"Edward! Oh, Edward!"

She has never needed Jasper to know what I am feeling. I can see in her thoughts all of the past, and how guilty she felt about the change that she was for Carlisle and me, how she can't feel complete if I am not with them, how, indeed, just as Emmett had observed, I am her and Carlisle's favorite.

I should feel comforted, but instead I just feel petty, and antsy to escape from her embrace.

"Please, Edward, please. Stay. Don't go. We need you. We _want_ you."

Really? Do they really? Want me?

This is too much for Jasper and he closes his eyes in pain. Surprisingly it is Rosalie who comes forward to stand beside Esme.

"We're family," she says. "No one gets left behind."

Carlisle's thoughts come to the fore among them all.

_Forgiveness. What do we have, save for this? How can we go on, save by this grace? For what shall we affirm in ourselves and each other? Our worst deeds? Or our best intentions? Our hatreds? Or our loves?_

I want it to stop. All the silent, sub-rosa communication. I want to rant and rage. They owe me that at least.

I level my eyes at Alice. "How _could_ you!" Her own words, thrown back in her face.

"I had to Edward! I _had_ to! Every other path would have been worse! You don't know what it's like. To see like I do. You think you know, but you don't!"

Jasper is helping her, the bastard, soaking me in everything she is feeling, the helplessness and terror and despair that her gift brings her. It is a curse, like all of our gifts. Power brings suffering. But at least she has brought Jasper back to her side. They are a united front again. And I can see the family closing itself around them. The lovers have been forgiven for their tiff.

"What about Bella? Doesn't anyone care about her? She's innocent in all this. _Innocent!_ How has she ever deserved to die?"

"Point is, she _ain't _dead, Edward. Ye seen that yerself now, I reckon. Ain't that what's most important? That she's still alive? Nary a hair even harmed."

"But you would have _allowed_ it. All of you!" I will never forget how he and Rosalie and Alice held me down. "I begged! I _begged!_"

My siblings all look away. Ashamed. Of themselves? Yes, but also ashamed for me. I can see it in their minds – except for Alice, and Esme – how they are embarrassed for me, that I should be so far gone for this human that I can never have – unless I decide _to hell with everything _and just _take_ her blood, fulfill the utter monstrosity that is my nature.

Once again I am hating Carlisle for changing me. If I had _ended_, as I was supposed to …

Bella would be dead, too. Crushed between her truck and Tyler's van.

Every other path would have been worse.

Esme is still holding me. Stubborn woman.

"We love you, Edward, can't you see? What Alice saw – Bella would have died if you had gone and interfered. She saw that your coming upon them forced Jasper's hand. No one would have been saved. And Jasper was going to let you kill him. And then there were witnesses. All those lives on your conscience. And Bella dead, too. She saw it driving you mad in the end."

Is that what Alice told them? Her own memories of the visions are impossibly tangled now. I can't sort them out, any more than I can sort out my own. Is it really true, then, that stopping Jasper before he killed Bella was just a wish on my part, but never a future?

"I hate you all!" There it is. My tantrum. Pouring out of my mouth like poison, as I push Esme off of me. "You all call _me_ selfish! What do you think _you_ are?" They are embarrassed for me again. I am embarrassed for myself, but I keep yelling at them, cursing, throwing every weak and small-minded thought any of them ever had out into the open for everyone to hear. I have perfect and total recall, and I refuse to spare anyone.

No one argues with me, no one resists, and it is so _unsatisfying_. I want to shake them, each of them, but instead end up just demolishing Esme's hand-fashioned table. She blinks, but allows it, and that only enrages me more.

Jasper has had enough. He steps in, pushing at me. I try to block him out but I can't. He pushes Carlisle and Esme's emotions at me. Alice's too. His own are empty, a vessel to hold and present theirs. They ache for me. Ache with a pain I can hardly bear.

_Oh, Edward._

I don't want to give in. I can't. "You're hypocrites, all of you! All any of you care about is – "

"Us!" Carlisle finishes. "Each other. This family. Of which you are the first, my son."

"Don't! Don't give me that!" Don't thrust my own thoughts back in my teeth. As I have just done to each of them.

The fight goes out of me in a rush. Maybe Jasper helped. Maybe I am just a weakling. I am wrapped in the forbearance and contrition that surrounds me. It's humiliating. They're coddling me. Except for Alice. Alice is radiating hope.

"You didn't _see_, Carlisle. He …" I cannot even put words to the memory. "Her … He … you didn't _see_ what he _did!_"

Deep pain crosses his face. He may not have seen, but he has imagined.

"By the grace of God, that fate did not come to pass," he whispers. "Nor will it." _For she hath been passed over. Oh, my son._

"You have seen into our hearts, Edward. However any of us may have erred against you, it was in love, not malice. You know this. Nor have any of us hated the girl. You know this also." _Her father is my friend. A good friend. Whom I must yet leave behind. _

A brief image flashes: a crusted gravestone, unkempt grass, mist, _Charles Swan, Devoted Father And Public Servant, 1967 – _. A pair of white lilies in Carlisle's hand obscures the end date. He shuts the moment from his mind as soon as it forms, but, of course, I have seen.

Rosalie's words echo in my head. _You can't love a human, Edward._

They die. They die and pass away. Bella, also, will be laid under the earth. Not today, but some day. My anger is gone. Alice's vision, of Bella in her casket, my journal, a stone that in time will be forgotten … no, not forgotten, I will find her, and visit, I will. I will.

I sit down in the chair beside me that has managed to survive my temper. Esme comes and pulls me against her as if I truly were her child.

"It's six o'clock," Rosalie reminds us. "Better if we're not driving like maniacs to get to school on time."

I remember that my clothes are damp and filthy with moraine and sheep blood and tree sap. I need to change. Esme smiles as I disentangle from her and glance in chagrin at the mess I have made of her dress and the room.

"It's nothing Edward. We are all safe. And so is Bella, now, too."

* * *

_Un Chien Andalou - A macabre little Surrealist film made by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali in 1928. My little bow to Pattinson in Little Ashes …_

* * *

_This chapter is posted with deepest gratitude to Averysubtlegift, geo3, SaritaDreaming and Woodlily. I could never have done it without you. And to all dear readers, thank you. Because of you, writing is not a lonely endeavor._


	40. What Dreams May Come

**What Dreams May Come**

Day is done.

Jasper's return to school was commented upon and whispered about at least through lunch time. The purveyors of some of the more lurid explanations for his absence had to invent even more outlandish explanations for his return – so soon, and so little the worse for wear. In the end it was accepted, though not without disappointment, that he had probably just had a 'spell' with his heart.

Now the day is done, and all will soon be forgotten.

My footsteps echo around me as I get up from the piano and walk out of our great room.

Just like it was on the night I betrayed Bella, the house is empty. Everyone has cleared out. Looking for some peace and quiet and space to breathe. Jasper is standing in our foyer with his hands in his pockets. I can't believe he has … the gall? … the nerve? … the courage? To face me alone in this empty house. I am not over yesterday by any means, and he knows it.

I see the corner of his mouth lift in a wry half-smile. His sigh is nothing but sad. He's not covering his feelings either, and I feel his uncertainty.

"Walk with me?" he asks.

And in that split second I am tired, so tired, of being the boy in this family. Whatever it is that Jasper has in his mind, I'm going to take it like a man.

There's no need for words. He turns, and I follow him out.

His voice is soft and low in the dusk. "I don't like calling these things to mind."

Dark shapes flicker violently, as we meander across Esme's beautiful grass. I cringe from his memories, even though he himself barely lets them take shape. They cut and scream. His scars come to life on his skin and my own flesh hurts.

"I've never wished that girl harm. You have to know that. Alice loves her."

And he shows me what she had been feeling since the day Bella came. Joy. Discovery. Devotion. Though it lies in some unknown day yet to come. The happiness of being received and liked by someone who has no family tie with her. A friend.

The intensity of it pierces me, twining with Alice's visions of herself and Bella with their heads together, arms around each other's waists, telling each other secrets.

"I'd never take that from her. Not willingly. Not even when she thought she saw differently … thought that of me …"

His pain at that, his indignation at being thought less of, is a stabbing thing.

I have nothing to say.

Jasper sighs again, shuttering his thoughts. I catch them anyway – what he knows, what Alice won't say.

_He loves the girl, too. It's hopeless, now._

We have made our way to Esme's gazebo. The wisteria is leafless still, gnarled vines twisting across the arbor beams. "I don't like calling these things to mind at all … but it's the least of what I owe you."

Night clouds hang, brushing the treetops with grey.

"Walk with me," he says once more – though we both are seated firmly on the iron bench – and then he opens his memory to me completely.

_The Chihuahuan desert is dusty and unlovely in the dark. The apparitions come at great speed from the north, slowing as they approach. They must have come from a town, because one of them bears a trussed child slung like a kid across his shoulders. It is a boy of perhaps eight or ten years, terrified into silence. As are Jasper's coven. Maria does not even dare to hiss. Even the newborns crouch fearfully, taking their cue from the others. The dark cloaks are known, even here._

_They come forward, like a processional in some ancient play – libation bearers – as Jasper realizes that is what the human child is to be._

There are five, and I recognize three of them – Demetri, Santiago and Chelsea. They had visited Carlisle and me in 1919. Now I see the errand that they had been on just beforehand.

_With them are a dark-haired boy and a pale-blonde girl, barely older than the human slung across Santiago's shoulders._

_The five come to a halt before the coven. They are outnumbered perhaps eight to one, but Maria's flock are seething with fear and uncertainty. Jasper does not dare make any move to calm them, for fear of discovery. Only into Maria's emotions does he oh-so-carefully pour trickles of deception, and the imperative to conceal her greatest asset._

_Demetri smiles disarmingly. "Who leads?" he asks, in impeccable Spanish._

_Maria takes a half step forward and goes down on one knee._

_Demetri gestures lightly with his chin and in a single movement Santiago swings the child down from his shoulders and, with the long nail of his pinky finger slices open the throat from ear to ear. Maria is caught full in the face with the arterial spray and the whistling froth from the severed trachea._

_She does not dare to even lick the blood that is on her lips, but the newborns cannot be stopped. They surge forward in a mass, only to collapse as if every string in their bodies had been cut._

Jasper does not dwell. The memory of the blood – the smell, the spatter to his own jaw and neck and shirt; the child's body carelessly let fall, convulsing briefly in the ropes that bound wrists and ankles; the hard-baked ground barely drinking anything in at all – is unbearable to both of us. We want it. Horribly. Even now, Jasper does. Even I, yes, _I_ want it. Even a child's blood. I would like to think that I wouldn't, that I would _never_. For whatever it may be worth, I _have_ never. And yet …

I think of myself, crouched as I was on the rocking chair in Bella's room, imagining, as I did, myself – or some spirit shade of myself – lying down on that bed beside her.

I shudder.

"_Lead us to your rival," Demetri commands, and suddenly all of the newborns are released from whatever had held them in thrall. The level of panic among them is uncontrollable, and the five have to herd the coven as much as follow it, a hundred miles to Roderigo's camp. _

Even though it is only a memory, the un-moderated fear buffets Jasper all over again, and he is trembling on the bench beside me.

I see in the next moments an aspect of Chelsea's talent that I had not known, that perhaps even Carlisle does not know.

_Some of Roderigo's coven have gone foraging. One by one and two by two they appear from all directions, drawn in by a net of loyalty that compels them to drop whatever they have been doing and come home._

_The pitch of dread and helplessness and fury is excruciating. Jasper can barely hold himself together. The two covens are each huddled with their own like penned cattle. Any vampire foolish enough to try to make a break for it is instantly severed from the use of his body. A dozen in each camp lie on the ground, spastically twitching like the murdered child._

_With an oddly whimsical smirk, Demetri begins to recite._

"_Wherever a host is stationed, briars and thorns spring up. In the sequence of great armies there are sure to be bad years."_

_The strange spell is cast wider, and every member of both covens lies collapsed on the ground._

"_Blessed are__ the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."_

I watch as Santiago culls the newborns from each coven.

"_Blessed are__ they that mourn: for they shall be comforted."_

_There is no wailing, but there is certainly gnashing of teeth, as the newly made vampires of each army are thrown on top of one another like so much cordwood._

"_Blessed are__ the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."_

_There is not much real wood in this part of the country, but Santiago manages to gather a sizeable pile of dead chaparral, tumbleweed and rabbit brush._

"_Blessed are__ they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."_

_The emotions of the newborns are screaming, and Jasper is near shattering. Only one thought holds him together. If he breaks open and reveals his gift he will be either conscripted or killed._

"_Blessed are__ the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." At this, Demetri laughs softly._

"_Blessed are__ the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Demetri nods to the blonde girl, and she produces a flint and an iron bar. _

_He pauses, and stares directly at Maria and Roderigo, who have been ravaging the haciendas and towns under cover of Mexico's ten-year revolution, to feed their own intemperate war._

"_Blessed are__ the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God!"_

_Santiago and Chelsea begin dismembering the newborns joint by joint, throwing the pieces onto the piled kindling. Hands and feet flop like fish, trying to find their owners. The blonde girl solemnly strikes sparks onto the glistening venom, and white-hot fire erupts. _

"_Blessed are__ they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."_

_Not even the strange quelling spell can stop the screaming now, as the newborns are limbed alive, and thrown, one piece at a time onto the pyre. No head goes in until the entire body has been burned._

"_Blessed are__ ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.__"_

_In an hour, both newborn armies are reduced to ash._

"_In all things, moderation; nothing in excess," Demetri says when it is done. "But we must allow Jane to do her part."_

_The blonde waif giggles, and then Maria and Roderigo are twisting and screeching on the ground, biting their own limbs in the extremus of their pain._

"_Enough, Jane. Enough."_

Here in the safety of our lovely yard, Jasper and I are quivering uncontrollably. If we were human we would be sweating and puking, and probably passed out. Whatever anger I may have felt toward him for Bella, is completely blotted out by the magnitude of what he endured that night. He felt _everything_. In the fate of the newborns he was dismembered and burned, over and over, held paralyzed in their terror until the last airless scream.

We lean against each other, completely spent.

"I'm sorry Edward. I'm sorry."

_The five cloaked figures draw together, and Jasper notices that they have positioned themselves on purpose so that the dawn rising at their backs throws their faces into shadow, but ignites halos of light around them._

_A chilly breeze skirls in from the horizon, and separates the lavender-colored ash from the few black embers of wood that have survived. Finer than talc and lighter than feathers, it disperses with the last tendrils of smoke. Only Maria's face, still damp with the slaughtered child's blood, catches a thin layer of her foot soldiers' remains._

_Amid the numb stillness that has fallen, Jasper is acutely aware of Demetri's aura. Though the guardsman's face is as impassive as a graven idol, inside he is laughing at his own mummery, and sneering at the ignorance and superstition of these "locals", whose eyes are gaping at beings who seem to be even more supernatural than they are._

_/ This is how it's done … / _

And I am not sure if that is Jasper's thought ninety years ago in Mexico, or right now, here beside me.

_/ Controlling at a distance. They make legends of themselves. /_

_Demetri raises his hand, as if in benediction._

"_Remember what you have learned today, children. My master commands it. Live peaceably among yourselves, and be good shepherds to your flocks. Take only what you need. Remain invisible at their gates. Aro has spoken."_

_The five wheel in unison, and glide away as swiftly as they had come. Only after they have gone far out of sight does the immobility spell lift._

"Nobody ever questioned your blond hair?"

"I expect they thought I'd been taken from among Pershing's men."

That would be just like Demetri, to take no interest in such trivialities as human customs of hair length in the military from one century to the next.

Jasper has certainly garnered my sympathy with his memories, but now that we are out of them I only resent him for it.

"What does any of this have to do with Bella?" I snap.

Jasper's eyes squeeze shut, and his worst nightmare floods us both.

The piano in our great room is smashed to flinders, its dark, splintered pieces all swept in a heap. The red-eyed children are in our house. Our family lies incapacitated on the floor. The tearing begins. Limb by limb. In his imagination, Jasper is the last to die. Carlisle, Esme, myself, one by one in pieces onto the pyre. Purple and black smoke boils upward, staining the ceiling. Rosalie and Emmett, beheaded, faces contorted. Sheets of flame roar ravenously with the venom that pours from every severed part.

Alice, they lay their hands on Alice, and Jasper curls in on himself beside me with a cry.

"For Christ's sake, stop it! You've made your point!" Even though I don't believe for a minute that it would come to this. Not for a tiny little slip like one girl saying something injudicious about an old journal. If it came to that, we could move, and everything would be forgotten.

"You take this family for granted, Edward. Just to live in peace. To have people around you who laugh. Who are kind. Who love."

I've _known_ this. I've seen it in his thoughts: what a balm Alice has been, what a balm _we_ are to him, how he's longing for the day when his years among us are more than those he spent in the Southern Wars, when the happiness will begin to weigh more than the pain.

But I'd never _felt_ it the way I do right now. Now that I have known exactly that refuge in Bella.

"Don't think for a minute they'd spare her, Edward. Don't think for a minute." He has the decency to stop at words, but my own imagination supplies the rest. It is my face that I see, helplessly baptized by her spraying blood.

If I could throw up, I would; but I haven't fed since the two sheep on Hurricane Ridge.

We sit side by side, hyperventilating uselessly, until Jasper can bring us both under control.

"You all think it was about Alice and me having a spat. Maybe it was." He shakes his head. "Maybe it was. Maybe her not trusting me like that made me feel like giving up on trying to give her what she wanted. She _hurt_ me, Edward."

And he shows me.

Perhaps I am lucky that I have no lover, no mate. His giving to her, day after day enduring and quelling my thirst, only to be so distrusted, so cast aside for a stranger, was like a bed of swords.

"But that was still just the small potatoes," he whispers. Our shoulders knock against each other as a final shudder passes through us both, and I feel Jasper fasten shut the place where his memories lie. They are my memories, now, too.

"I had to get away from her, from all of you, to clear my feelings. To figure out what had to be done. But I'm no deserter!"

That is not entirely true. But then, who could blame him for deserting Maria's army?

Pictures flit through his mind – a log that he sat on for a day and a night, the puzzle pieces of Bella and the journal and me, our family on its tightrope between darkness and light.

The danger he felt we were in.

His inevitable conclusion.

Silence stretches. No one has come back yet.

After everything Jasper has shown me, I am even more at a loss than before.

"Why didn't you kill her, then? You could have. There was no one to stop you."

Jasper sighs, and looks upward, past the arbor of straight beams and twisted boughs, to the featureless black of the sky. For a long time there is nothing in his mind except the black above us. It's too early in the season for any sort of insect noise, and though the clouds hang low, nearly touching the treetops, there is no rain. The stillness is profound. For once, I do not press, but only wait.

Minutes pass.

I feel something building in his chest, and of course, in my own as well. From the corner of my eye, I see him shake his head minutely.

"She went into the church."

He lets the words lie.

"I wasn't going to follow her. But I got curious."

If I had a human heart, it would be racing now.

Curious.

The way a lion becomes curious upon seeing the movement of a gazelle across its path. We all know the feeling. We know it all too well. He was hunting her, plain and simple. I want to kill him again.

He shoots me a look. "Do that and you'll never get the end of the story."

Damnation.

In his mind's eye, and in mine, I watch him follow Bella through the big black door. He relives it for me, with me.

Easing the heavy door shut without a sound. Hiding himself in a corner behind the furthest pews.

She wanders a little bit, in the empty church, searching. He watches her from behind as she finds the collection box, slips a dollar bill into the open slot.

She moves to the left, where there is a table with a double rack of holders and a few spent candles. A modest crucifix hangs on the wall above.

He feels her. She is a little uncertain, a little abashed, but beneath it all … He cannot take his eyes off of her.

She fumbles with the lighter. The votive flares to life. She places it carefully and then gets down on her knees.

Jasper's chest aches, and so does mine. She crosses herself, before the flame and the nailed man. We see the posture of her back, the soles of her shoes. Simple. Humble. Pure. We are as soft as new clay, and she stamps us indelibly.

With palms together, she prays. No word passes her lips but we feel. Oh, we _feel_.

Held in care and peace. Comforted, and led beside still waters.

This is what she is praying for. For Jasper. For Alice. For Rosalie. For all of our family. For all who have need. The empty air fills to the rafters with her wish.

Night falls outside, and there is barely any light in the church except for the one candle's lonely flame. Jasper has long ago fallen to his knees. Pacified.

The clouds finally open, and a light, chilly rain patters around us.

My brother slips out of the church, just as Bella gets to her feet. Her voice barely reaches his ears. He is already running. Running back to Alice.

"I'll die before I let anyone hurt her, now, Edward. You have to know that."

"You've told … showed …"

"Yes."

This is why they all tolerated my outburst; why no one in our family harbors _any_ thought to harm her any more; why, hurt as we all were, their every thought was just to hold, and to heal.

"She's part of us now, Edward. For better or worse."

For better or worse.

Everything has changed.

* * *

_A/N: I want to give special thanks to my dear beta, averysubtlegift, for this beautiful image which she wrote back on my first draft of this chapter:_

_"I picture the wind blowing around them, anyone passing by seeing two handsome men in a deep conversation - never knowing the truth about what is really passing between them." (Guh!)_

_Following are some notes on the text for anyone who is as nerdy-minded as I am ..._

(1) It is no secret that I am in love with Edward Anthony Masen's _My Lost Youth ( _.net/s/4855866/1/_ )_. I humbly take her pre-Twilight narrative as canon. In that story, Chelsea, Demetri and Santiago pay Carlisle and Edward a little visit while Edward is still in his first year as a vampire. One of the most compelling and harrowing and moving and, yes, FUNNY series of chapters I have ever read.

(2) Demetri fancies himself something of a connoisseur of human literature, (although for the Americas his considered opinion is "Pfft!"). The first quote "Wherever a host is stationed ..." comes from the Tao De Jing - Chapter 30 儉武 (_Jian Wu_ = "Avoid Battle"). The Beatitudes are from Matthew 5.3-12. "All things in moderation ... " Demetri is paraphrasing one of the three inscriptions said to be on the Temple of Delphi: γνῶθι σεαυτόν (_gnōthi seautón_ = "know thyself"); μηδέν άγαν (_mēdén ágan_ = "nothing in excess"); and Ἑγγύα πάρα δ'ἄτη (_engýa pára d'atē_ = "make a pledge and mischief is nigh")。

(3) In Maria's army, Jasper's lovely golden locks would have been a very gringo oddity, hence Edward's question. As for Jasper's reply, in March 1916, General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing led the United States Army 8th Brigade on the "Punitive Expedition" into Mexico in search of the revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. They never did catch their quarry. Presumably all casualties were accounted for ...


	41. A Bad Thing

_Just playing in Stephenie's field of dreams ..._

* * *

**A Bad Thing**

I did a bad thing.

I peeked.

The last page of Edward's journal. I peeked.

It's completely blank.

So is the page before that.

And the one before that.

I went back five pages and still nothing, and then I got scared.

Because obviously something stopped Edward from filling this journal up.

World War I.

That can't be right. Edward's birthday was on June 20th. (That was a happy day. His mom threw a huge garden party, and his dad even let him and his friends shoot off some roman candles after all the eating and singing and birthday caking were done.) The point is, he would have not even been seventeen and a half when the war ended. Too young to enlist, even on Armistice Day. I checked.

But there were boys as young as sixteen who had fibbed themselves onto the boats and into the ranks. I checked that, too.

Oh, Edward.

Is that what he did? Run away from his parents and go to be a soldier? Left this diary behind? Never to be finished? I can't even bear to think about it.

His friend signed up. His best friend, Tommy Borden, the one who was a year older than him.

It had been the Fourth of July. Edward's family had gone to Riverview Park. That was a big, popular amusement park in Chicago – all shiny and new back then, just built in 1904. There are lots of old postcards of it on Google. One of them is pasted in my scrapbook now. They had a carousel and a scenic railway, and an exhibit re-enacting a naval battle from the Civil War. There was food and bandstands, and a Hell Gate and a Hades Entrance, too. Who knew people were so fascinated with death back in those days?

There had been a sunset concert with patriotic music. Edward had written about the crowd singing along, with songs like "Battle Hymn of the Republic", and "Over There." How the sound of all the men's voices was "stirring", how he wondered if his voice would someday be as deep as his father's.

His friend Tommy Borden was there, too; and under the fireworks he had pulled Edward aside behind the band shell, to tell him he'd signed up with the recruiter at the post office that morning.

I wonder if it was the same post office where those two boys (What two boys? I bet it was this Tommy, and another one of their friends) had stolen the poster of the pretty Navy girl.

Is that what Edward did? Is that why the last who-knows-how-many pages of his journal are blank? (I'm too scared to check exactly how many.) Did he run away to the war, to be with his friend? To watch his back like they'd always done since grade school?

Maybe he just put away the childish thing.

It's so stupid for me to be worried about this boy, who lived and died before I was even born. But I don't want him to have died young. In those horrible trenches, with the mud, and the artillery pounding all around them. I want him to have had a long happy life. If he had, he could have, maybe, just maybe, been alive still when I was born.

I want so much for there to have been a time – even if it was only very short – when this Edward Anthony Masen and I were in the world together. Even if it were only for just one day. It's not impossible. He was born in 1901. I was born in 1991. A man can live to be ninety, or a little more, can't he?

I'm lying on my bed, with the journal in my hands. It feels so familiar to me now. It feels like I've always had it. The leather is so soft. It feels nice when I rest my cheek against it. It smells like me now, more than Edward. And it smells like the cedar sprig too. That makes me sad. I don't want it to not smell like Edward any more. Even though he's not the Edward who wrote this. That boy's smell I'll never know.

Why does all of this hurt so much?

I'm afraid to read forward from where I've gotten to – end of July, 1918.

Instead I'm lying on my side, holding the journal to my chest and asking.

Please, God, keep him safe. Don't let anything bad happen to him. Send your angels to look after him.

Does that even work? Can a prayer reach back in time?

But God's time is eternity. There is no now or then. Only here. So I pray with all my might.

And turn the page.

* * *

I sit with the dead doe in my arms, her throat savaged open. But not bleeding. No. All of that is inside of me now.

Her body cools so rapidly. When I sprang at her, she had no time to run. Only to turn, and look at me with Isabella's eyes. Now, they _all_ look at me with Isabella's eyes.

"Edward. Edward!"

Alice's voice frightens me.

"What do you see?" I ask her, frantically. Our whole family is united in the purpose of keeping Bella safe, now. And yet, what certainty do I have?

Alice laughs lightly. "I see you lost in thought." She emerges from the bracken, bending under the low-sweeping branch of a spruce. Here in the deep forest, with her small form and jet-black hair, she could truly pass for one of the fairy folk. Morgaine, reincarnated – and now immortal. Jasper emerges behind her, her tall Galahad. Their mouths are clean of the blood of their kills. I put mine down. They do their best to be polite, but I can see how odd I look to them, clinging to the carcass.

I am hunting with my family again. Hunting alone put me too much in mind of that other time I walked by myself – there could hardly be a worse remembrance to have before going to Bella's window each night.

"It's going to be all right, Edward. It really is. I'm pretty sure." Alice's and Jasper's hands have found their way to each other. They reconciled in private, but the wordless peace between them laps at us all when we are together.

"That's easy for you to say."

"It's not. It's not easy at all."

I move away from the dead doe, wiping my mouth with my palm, remembering barely in time not to wipe that on my trousers, but to lick away the last stain from my life line with my tongue. There is no getting around it. We are creatures, beasts.

"Edward."

Did I say that out loud? Or did Jasper pick up my feeling, and transmit it to Alice? I could sift through his thoughts to find out. Or I can just speak.

"We're freaks. The three of _us_ most of all."

"That's an unkind thought, brother. And ungrateful. Your girl would be dead without our gifts, all three of us."

_When did it happen? When did she become __**my girl**__?_

I don't need his recasting of that first day to know – if I were not a telepath, and Alice not clairvoyant, and if Jasper had no power to project grief and remorse – what a bloodbath it would have been, when that girl's scent first filled all my senses.

And how many times after that was I pulled back, again and again, because Alice could see, and Jasper could make me feel, and I could be shown, silently, secretly, with no one knowing but us?

Alice is melting into Jasper's side, brows knit almost into one behind her spiky bangs, lip almost trembling. She glares at me from the shelter of her mate's arms.

"We're not freaks! We're not _freaks! _"

My moment of revulsion must have leaked through Jasper to her, and right now he is making sure that I feel her distress right back, bright and clear.

"We're guardians, Edward, we're _guardians_. Can't you see? You're the guardian of our pasts. You've heard all our memories, and you hold them for us, keep them safe. And Jasper, he guards our present." _That's why we need him so much_. "He guards our hearts, and shows us to each other, so we don't hurt each other too much. And me … I … I guard our future."

Her face is turned into Jasper's chest, now. His fingers thread through her hair, and his lips brush her crown.

"Shhh, little bird, it's all right. It's all right."

"Oh, Edward, I'm so sorry! Can you forgive me? I almost lost our future, almost pushed Bella off a cliff."

My angry heart shocks me, with spiteful words still not spent. "How could you do it?" Right in front of them both, I say it, "If you had let me go right at the start I could have stopped Jasper."

"No, not stopped! _Killed_. You would have killed him. I couldn't, Edward, I just couldn't."

_Mind yourself, boy._ And he plays her anguish into me. But I am no stranger to anguish.

"_You were ready to sacrifice Bella!_ After all your talk about how she was going to be your _friend!_"

"No, Edward, I would never! I _could _never! She's going to love me, want me."

"Then how? _Why?_ What the hell were you doing?"

"There's a thing called faith, Edward." Her memories race through her head – years, _decades_, wandering; with nothing to lead her but the glimmer of blond hair and a soft voice, and a strange satori of herself pounced on a lynx, surrounded by kin with golden eyes.

"Sometimes it's all we have."

I snort in a way my mother would never have approved. "You think the world is really so kind? You think there really is a heaven … a higher power?"

"I'm talking about faith in people we love, Edward. Even if I couldn't see it, I had to … I had to believe."

Jasper holds her tighter.

"We're all on your side now," he says, "all on Bella's side. But you're as worried as ever. Why?"

How can I explain it? This horrible unease. Is it just because I had been given such a dreadful fright? Or is it because her blood _still_ unravels me, will _always_ be just a heartbeat, just a breath away, from carnage. I am so wretchedly desperate. Desperate to keep her safe. Desperate to keep her in this world.

A tiny glimpse leaks through my sister's mind. Like a flash of pale skin seen through a keyhole. And then she puts her hand over it.

"Alice, you can't keep hiding from me like this. You have to show me."

She struggles, debates, finally lets me _see._

Bella pale. Bella cold. Bella bloodless.

Bella perfected.

I am appalled. "How long have you been seeing this?"

"Since yesterday."

Since Jasper said, _"She's part of us now, Edward. For better or worse."_

No, longer.

The vision had come to her as I had clung to the tree outside of Bella's window, transfixed by the sight of her alive.

_N__one of that evil has happened._

_And I still have a chance to make sure that it never will._

I plead with my sister. "You don't see her living a long, happy life? Loved by a granddaughter?"

Carrying my journal with her into the arms of the earth …

"Not any more, Edward. Not any more."

* * *

_A/N: Here are the post cards of Riverview Park (along with some others). The renditions are from when Edward was a child, around 1908-1910. I wonder which one Bella chose for the scrap-book ...?_

_h t t p : / / chicagopc . info / entertainment_amusement_parks . htm_

_Here is the song, "Over There". People's voices and pronunciation sounded different in those days. The popular singer who is recorded here was a tenor, but one can imagine the voices of many men joining in at the concert ..._

_h t t p : / / www . youtube . com / watch?v=wbggEGUaE28_

_As always, heartfelt thanks to my midwives: averysubtlegift, WoodLily, malianani, SaritaDreaming_

_Thank you, dear readers for visiting this little tale._


	42. Convergence

_**What has gone before: **_

_Jasper's eyes squeeze shut, and his worst nightmare floods us both …_

_"You take this family for granted, Edward ..."_

_"Why didn't you kill her, then? There was no one to stop you."_

_"She went into the church."_

_..._

_"She's part of us now, Edward. For better or worse."_

_For better or worse._

_Everything has changed._

_..._

_A tiny glimpse leaks through my sister's mind. Like a flash of pale skin seen through a keyhole. And then she puts her hand over it._

_"Alice, you can't keep hiding from me like this. You have to show me."_

_She struggles, debates, finally lets me __see._

* * *

**Convergence**

March.

I have to keep my eyes off of Bella during class. Others are noticing when I stare. Not just Jessica. I hear that boy, Michael Newton, in his thoughts. His mind is on Jessica, now, more than Isabella. But he notices when I stare at her. _Creepy,_ is what he thinks. _Like he wants to __**do**__ things to her. __**Eat**__ her._ And he shudders.

I keep my eyes to myself, or to the window, or my desk, or the pen that I am twiddling endlessly in my fingers. I watch Isabella through the eyes of the class – even the teacher, since she sits right in front and he has the best view of all. Michael Newton has no concept of creepy.

And I hate it. I want to look at Bella, gaze at her, observe her every movement and expression. I want to see her through my own eyes.

That will have to wait … until night falls. It is falling somewhat later, now. March has come in like a lion. The length of the days and the steeper angle of the light are perceptible, even to human senses. Everyone is restless.

* * *

I wait until dark. I have already killed and fed. My family knows where I am: waiting here in the woods at the outskirts of her yard.

Tonight is different. Her heartbeat and breathing are going wrong, _all_ wrong. I hear her every vital sign, stuttering, labored.

I am about to dash to her window when the back door opens and freezes me in place in the wooded darkness. Chief Swan comes out with a shotgun, loaded and ready. His mind is clouded and unsettled. What is he doing with a _gun_? Surely he doesn't suspect that I am here, have been here every night … Have the Quileutes smelled me on their visits? Have they _said _something?

I am beside myself. Bella's heartbeat is much too fast. Her breathing is irregular. Something is _wrong_, and I can do nothing but skulk motionless in the shadows.

Chief Swan scans the perimeter of the meager lawn with a heavy-duty flashlight, cradling the gun at deceptively easy readiness over his other arm. His eyes squint into the black, and I see tumbled recollections in his mind of half-eaten bodies – the girl, the security guard; and there has been another death – a groundskeeper at Lake Quinault Lodge. He has seen that body too.

The antique hunting lodge is only forty miles from Forks as the crow flies.

The Chief is doing the math, triangulating from the sites of the previous kills. _Damn big range, even for a bear._ There have been too many human deaths in too short a time. He wonders if a single animal can do this, or is it more than one? Perhaps more than one kind. There has not been a man-eater in these parts for a very long time.

Even with the flashlight, the darkness that surrounds the house is nearly impenetrable, and Swan is acutely aware of the limitations of his own senses.

_Maybe I should get a dog. Even after this thing is caught, might not be bad to have an animal around. Bella won't be with me forever._

I can scarcely pay any heed to his thoughts. All of my senses are consumed with what is coming distantly from Isabella's room. I will Chief Swan to hurry up and go inside to check on his daughter. _What if she's having a heart attack?_ Is that possible in one so young? Has she had some sort of silent heart disease all this time? Surely Carlisle would have detected it when he examined her …

For pity's sake, man, go inside!

He does.

I sprint across the yard and up the tree. In less than a second. Without a sound. I must make _no sound._

Bella's voice greets me in the barest whisper.

"Oh, no. No, no, no. Oh, please."

My whole chest is seized with panic. There is no scent of anyone in her room save her … well, and me. Who is she talking to? Who is hurting her?

"Don't let him die. Oh, please. Please let him live."

I peek past the trunk of the tree.

She is reading my journal. With her laptop and Google right beside her.

I recognize the page.

.

_October 13, 1918_

.

My memories of those last days are almost all through Carlisle's eyes. But I remember the first time I read what was written there by the boy who died.

.

_Father is dead. This church of ours has become a tomb. Not really. They've taken Father away already. But he had been separated from us when he became really sick, carried behind the curtains to the small chapel, which has been made into the "worst-off ward"._

_They wouldn't even let Mother tend him. Sister Margaret said we shouldn't be near the worst contagion when we still have a chance to get better. Father died alone. They say he never woke._

_I mustn't weep. I mustn't. Poor Mother._

_What is to become of us, without him?_

_._

She cannot put this down, now. And I cannot stop myself from staring through the window, following over her shoulder, as her heart trembles in her chest and her fingertips trace gently down each page.

.

_October 14th, 3 o'clock in the morning._

_The sisters won't allow the church to go completely dark. They carry their little lamps with them as they pass between the rows of cots, and they've left some lights burning in the sconces and by the altar. I wonder where all the pews have been put?_

_I have Father's pocket watch with me now. I shall keep it under my pillow. The very kind doctor brought it to me when he came to us in the afternoon. He said he thought it best to give it into my safekeeping, all things considered. Was it he who was with Father, then, when he died?_

_Doctor insists that Mother and I must sleep when we can. I don't know how. I've pulled Mother's cot next to mine so that she can touch me whenever she wishes. She's resting now, but I'm sure she's awake, just pretending to sleep so that I can write. I should put this away. Perhaps if I lie still as well she will let herself sleep._

_._

_October 14th, after supper_

_The incessant coughing all around is driving me mad. It's a horrible sound that I hope I shall never hear again, once Mother and I are gone from here. Though God help us, we are coughing, too._

_This morning a horrible thought came to me. What is to be done with Father's remains? I didn't know whom to ask, and didn't dare speak of it for fear of upsetting Mother. Before even coming here we had read in the newspapers that the undertakers and gravediggers couldn't keep up, and there were not even pine boxes enough for the dead._

_I used the excuse of ferrying our bedpans to search for Dr. Collin in hopes he might be able to help, but the sisters say he's been called to St Luke's where another doctor has fallen ill. Finally just before supper he did come to check on Mother and me, and I was able to ask him somewhat secretly as Mother had nodded off. He has promised to contact Father's partners (if any of them are still well?) and in all events see that Father is properly laid to rest._

_I wish I could say this is a burden off my heart but I cannot. Only Friday morning we were all at home eating soft-boiled eggs and toast. Only Saturday afternoon I played the organ for Father, and he told me that it was a fine thing to do, to give music to so many souls on their sick beds. He said that if I should choose music over the law, he would be just as proud of me. Can it be he knew he was going? He'd coughed up a bit of blood then, and his lips were blue, but he could still speak. Did he know? Was he giving me his blessing?_

_._

_October 15th 5:15 A.M._

_I have just heard a cock's crow. That is certainly odd here in the middle of town. Perhaps a rooster has escaped from the farmer on the way to market? Perhaps the farmer fell down dead at the side of the road._

_There are no new linens to be had for the beds. Mother and I must lie in our sweat, and pray that we do not soil ourselves. We help each other as best we may. The sisters and nurses are worn thin caring for those who can no longer manage themselves. Some get ferried to the hospital for their last hours. Others simply die here._

_I miss Father so much._

_._

_October 15th 2:43 P.M._

_Sister Margaret has given Mother and me a ray of hope. She says she's seen the ones who live past three days like as not recover. I can't imagine what it will be like to go back to the house without Father. His watch measures the hours between my entries now. When they used to be measured in days and even weeks between. If I live, I promise never to waste time again._

_._

_October 16th 7:05 P.M._

_We are in St. Luke's now._

_Mother sounds like she is breathing under water. So do I. We are like two race horses, running neck and neck. Who will reach the finish first?_

_All the promises I'll never keep. To look after Tommy's girl. To find him in France. I can barely even hold the damn pen. Barely hold up my own head._

_I just want to say one thing. To whomever reads this. Mother. It's not your fault. I could never have stayed in that house alone while you and Father went to the infirmary. Whatever happens, we did the right thing._

_._

_Oct. 17 5 A.M._

_She's gone. When I was sleeping. She's gone. At least she didn't see me die first. I feel sick. To think of her body, cold and stiff and black, stacked naked in the morgue with God knows how many others. Why didn't they wake me up when they took her? Why didn't they let me say goodbye? I never said goodbye to either of them, and now they're both gone. They're corpses. Mother will be manhandled by some stranger._

_._

_I'm scared. I'm dying in a bed, not a trench. With all my arms and legs still attached. And still I'm scared. What a coward I am. I hope -_

_._

"No! No, no, no! Come back!"

Bella is calling my name in a voiceless whisper. Not mine, but the name of the boy whose sudden paroxysm of coughing had laid a messy splatter of red across the page. All brown, now, and as faded as the ink of his long lost pen.

She is going through the remaining pages of the journal, one by one, slowly, carefully, so as not to miss a single one.

"Please, oh please. Edward. Come back."

She finds nothing but blank.

Her whimpering sob wrings my heart. I see her curl on her side, as she has so many times in sleep, with the leather volume clasped, so tightly now, to her chest. Her whole body is wracked by sobbing, which she stifles with the quilt stuffed into her mouth.

There had been none to mourn me when I died. Only now, so long afterward, so far away from that place, I am given requiem in Isabella's cries. She pulls the pillow over her head to muffle and hide, but her grief pierces me through and through. It hurts, _physically_, like phantom knives that enter where no steel can ever touch.

I want to slip in through the window, to hold her, to comfort her, but how can I? The boy that she weeps for has already given up the ghost. If not on that rough-sprung bed in Carlisle's basement, then surely afterward, in the two hundred and ninety seven gruesome murders that I committed between December 1, 1927 and August 23, 1931.

I am not that boy that she keens for. And yet, something within, something that I did not even know was lying in frozen agony there, is being healed tonight, by this girl's inconsolable tears.

And there is more.

For though she does not love me, I love her.

Jasper was right. Alice is right.

I love her.

But I cannot have her.

Even if I watch over her from dark trees her whole life through, even if she lives to be loved by a granddaughter, the day must come when she dies. As surely as she has lost the boy in the journal, so, too, must I lose her.

At the thought, I am consumed with lust to drink from her. Her blood and her tears and the sweet gentle soul that is still weeping under the pillow, choking and gasping as she tries to still herself, all mingle together in my addled senses, pouring out in a holy font that runs red, red, red. Wretched beast, my lips part in a tigerish grimace, pulling the fragrance of her in over my tongue.

If only.

If only she had been born in my time. I would have courted her until I died.

If only the boy I had been had lived.

I imagine a bent frame and white head, a gnarled hand passing over wispy dark hair. He would have doted on the little girl, even if given only a year.

Or if I had been born in this age … to meet with her here.

And watch helplessly as she perished between two hulks of pitiless metal.

_Every other path would have been worse_.

Only by dying have I managed to preserve her life. I _will not_ undo that now.

Alice insists that she doesn't see me taking Bella's singing blood any more. I will trust that only when her bones are laid beneath the earth. When I have lost her forever.

Alice's other vision, the new one, rises like a pale specter in my mind. How can she still see this when I am bending my every thought to refuse?

Isabella.

Behind me in the forest, the owl calls her name.

* * *

_A/N: Edward playing the organ in the church-turned-infirmary is inspired by Minisinoo's beautiful one-shot "This Is My Beloved Son In Whom I Am Well Pleased."_

_Heartfelt thanks to geo3, SaritaDreaming, malianani, Woodlily, and always, aversubtlegift. I couldn't do this without you guys. Dear readers, thank you for gracing this story with your thoughts._


	43. The Water Road

**The Water Road**

I was so sure. So sure.

And so, so wrong.

1918 Edward is no relation to the Edward I know at all.

Not great grandfather. Not even great grand-uncle. He was born and died an only child.

No Tuck Everlasting either. No ash tree. No holy water.

I cried myself to sleep last night. And all day today, I've carried this rock around in my chest.

I should never have imagined that boy with Edward's face. But I couldn't help it. I wanted him to live in the Edward I know. It wouldn't have been so far fetched. Traits can be passed down. Spirits can find a new house. I was so sure that was what Edward was looking for. A past. A trail to himself.

But none of that is true. There was no family heirloom tucked into his blanket when he was given to a foundling home. No attic treasure stolen and hidden under his shirt when they came to take him away.

Nothing.

Just some random boy who happened to have the same first name as him. Who lived and died a hundred years ago.

I wonder where he got this journal, then? Did he pick it up cheap from somebody's yard sale? Why would he even do that? Just because of the name? And why would he keep it?

Why lend it to me?

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Unless.

Unless.

Did he fall in love with the dead boy just like I have?

Is that what the secret handshake is all about?

_Find me._

_Understand me._

I think of all the hateful things kids have said about Edward. The ugly words.

I can't believe he would take such a huge chance with me. To put that puzzle in front of me without a decoder ring. And then take the chance that if I _did _figure it out, I wouldn't make his life even more miserable than it is.

These thoughts are making me burn up inside. I'm sure I'm not just blushing, but _flushed_, as if I have a fever.

I think of Edward reading this journal, like I have. Finding his heart captured by the boy on the page, just like I was. I imagined that boy with Edward's face. I still do. I can't help it. I wonder what face Edward imagines?

And now I know what I want to do. How to show him that I walked the same road he did, and felt the same things he did. And that it's nothing to be ashamed of, no matter what anybody says.

I'm going to give him my scrapbook when I return the journal to him. There's one more page to write. The last one. For the last page of the journal.

It takes me all night, and all day at school trying to figure out what I want to say. Twenty three pages of my notebook paper are all covered with essays long and short about love and equality and all kinds of CRAP, now all wadded up and ready to get burned to ash. What if I've guessed wrong? All that stuff would freak him out.

What do I want to say to him, then?

Dad will be home soon. I should be getting dinner ready and doing my homework, but I can't do anything until this is finished.

I pull out the scrapbook and open it to the last page. If I had a rose tree, I would put its thorn against my heart, but all I have is my exacto-knife and my pinky finger.

Three drops of blood like poppy flowers on the page.

_(I loved him and lost him, just like you.)_

Keep it simple, Bella. Just simple.

_(I don't think it's ugly that you love a boy._

_You'll find someone, and someone will find you.)_

I search for a way to say it that won't freak him out. In the end I just write:

"You don't have to be alone."

I hope he'll understand.

* * *

I should give a thank-you note to Mike and the gang. They've given me the perfect excuse. To be where I am right now. Standing by Edward's Volvo. It's not really an excuse. I really _do_ want to invite him to come to La Push with us. It'll be nice. To do something normal. Something fun. He doesn't have to surf if he's not into that. He can hang out with me. I won't bother him. And maybe after we've all eaten barbecue and s'mores together the kids will realize that the Cullens aren't really any different from the rest of us.

In the mean time, I have the perfect cover for what I rushed out here at final bell to do.

I can't believe that I actually beat Edward to his car. But I did. And now, excuse or no excuse, my heart is pounding against the secret that I am holding to my chest. I've hidden it. The journal and the scrapbook are bound together, inside a Forks High School book cover. They look like they are one book. Like any other textbook. Not even Edward will know what it is until he opens it. And I've got the whole thing in a plastic bag, since it _is_ drizzling just a little bit.

Kids are staring, loitering a little as they go to their cars. Waiting to see what happens. Nobody ever talks to the Cullens. I wonder what Jessica is thinking.

Here he comes. Here _they_ come. All five of them. Holy crow. I feel like every little hair on my body is standing straight on end. I can hear my heart. I bet even they can, too. I'm not going to run. I didn't come out here just to run away at the last minute.

Breathe, Bella, breathe. Inhale. Exhale. They're not going to bite you.

Alice is staring at me. They're all staring at me. Only Alice looks like she really wants to be my friend. I feel like she's hugging me with her eyes. Jasper looks like he's in pain. Maybe his heart is hurting him. He closes his eyes and I feel like I can breathe again. Emmett. God, he's so big, even standing in the back behind Rose and Jasper. Did he …? He _winked_ at me! Rosalie looks like you wouldn't want to mess with her in a dark alley.

And Edward. Wearing his storm cloud eyes. Boring into me with them. He's stopped two feet in front of me.

"What do you want?"

Have I been even more wrong than I thought? He's being as mean and rude as the very first day.

We have an audience now. Mike actually has his cell phone out. Like he's going to call 911 if things get ugly.

I'm not turning back.

"So, the kids are going to the beach this Saturday. You … you guys wanna come?"

"Beach?" Edward actually sputters. I almost laugh. Emmett does it for me.

"Oh, Ed-boy, she got you!"

Edward shoots a truly venomous glare at Alice. What did _she_ ever do? Emmett's the one who just called him "Ed-boy" – right in front of other people.

"So, yeah, there's supposed to be some pretty big surf coming in this weekend, the van is fixed, and Tyler's parents are letting him drive again. We're going to have a barbecue and stuff after – " _What is Emmett's __**problem**__? Even Jasper is cracking a smile. Maybe they're all vegetarians or something?_

"I'm taking the truck, too, so there's plenty of room." They're all standing right in front of me; I have to make it clear that they're all invited. "I've got a tarp in back, in case it rains."

My eyes go back to Edward. The one I really want to be talking to.

"Come. It'll be fun. You don't have to surf if you don't want to. There's rocks and tidal pools and driftwood and stuff. And sand, too. It's pretty."

"Pretty?"

"Yes. Have you ever been there?"

"Where?"

"La Push. First Beach."

"No."

"Come," I say again.

Everyone's faces are like stone.

"Esme needs us to do some work in the yard this weekend."

Even I know that's a flat out lie. Even if it wasn't written over all their faces. Even Alice, who looks more sad than anything else.

Fine. I can deal.

The thing in my arms weighs a million tons right now. But I still have to give it to him. The journal's not mine to keep, and the scrapbook ... My face is getting red and hot just thinking about it. All the things I found and cut out and pasted one by one. The words that I wrote on that last page.

And my blood. _What was I thinking?_

I think about him laughing over it with his brothers and sisters. I think about it getting all over the school. But it's too late to turn back. I can't separate the scrapbook out without blowing his cover about the journal. And I don't want to try to talk to him again. This time was enough of a disaster. It has to all go to him together, even though he doesn't want it, will laugh at me, and think I'm gross, and queer.

I was so, completely, wrong.

I don't understand him at all. I never have.

He's got his hands up, tented over his nose and mouth again, with a look of total terror on his face. The little girl with the big bad tears is scaring the crap out of the boy with fox-colored hair. Even his family is holding their breath, like they're smelling something god-awful. I _swear_ I washed! I wash every night!

"Maybe some other time, then," I say.

Everyone in the whole parking lot is watching.

"Thanks for lending me the workbook."

And I hand it to him. The Edward who called to the air from a different time. And the heart that I gave in return, not just for the lost boy, but for the one in front of me, too. He has it all now. All of it. Even the cedar sprig.

Walk away. Hold your head up and walk away. Here in Forks you can say it's nothing, just rain in your face.

* * *

I am alone at last. Away from everyone.

Alice has seen what I am about to see, I'm sure. I hate that. This is _private_. I would rather be in my meadow for this, but it is misting there and I don't want any risk to the pages, so this abandoned logger's cabin will have to do.

I light the kerosene lantern beside me here on the gritty floor. I don't need it, but I want it.

This girl is as cunning as Alice. Wrapping my journal and its companion in a schoolbook cover. No wonder Alice is so enamored of her.

She still had no right to do what she did today. Waylaying us all so that Bella could get to my car first. Setting me up. Setting Bella up, too, doesn't she see that? She wants Bella so badly that she's willing to kill her to get her. Or rather, have me kill her. My sister fights as dirty as her mate. Shepherding this treasure into my hands.

And yet, rather than bury it here in the forest unseen, I am unpeeling the cover from the thing that Bella has given me.

Her art project.

Her blood.

She has offered me her blood. Even dried on the hidden page it calls to me.

How did Alice conceal all of this from me until it was too late? Until we were walking toward my car, and that girl. Until nothing could pull me away from taking it.

I set my journal aside on the unfurled wrappings, and look at this thing that Bella has made.

There is a drawing on the cover – her own naïve and lovely work. In colored pencil and metallic pen.

It is very dark: a night sky, and a sea cliff, with wild, wind-shaped pines, haunting the right-hand edge. The water is not stormy, but a low moon has set a broad white ribbon upon it, leading from shore to horizon. A single white bird, a swan, flies out, following the path over the water. She has titled this book "The Water Road", in golden letters.

Alice, you don't fight fair. You don't fight fair at all.

I open the book carefully. This thing must last me for a very long time.

Her inscription is short.

_Who can follow a road on water? It's always changing, moving; you can never quite see it for sure._

_I hope you find your Ithaka._

I cannot move. I cannot even breathe. Fire runs through my veins.

She wrote this.

She wrote this for me. For _me_. Not for the dead boy. For me.

What does she know? How does she know?

I am done for.

And so is she.

I turn the pages one by one.

Every entry in my old journal is commemorated here. In images. In snippets of music. Scraps of news and statistics even. Following me every step of my water road.

Oh, Bella.

I remember her, night after night, lying on her stomach on her narrow bed, ankles crossing and uncrossing in the air, feet smoothing absently over each other, sometimes even down one calf and then the other, the errant doves.

I remember her laptop and all manner of papers beside her. Using my journal as a distraction from her homework, I'd thought.

I was wrong. So completely wrong.

How many souls are there like this on this earth?

One. Only one.

Only one.

I must guard her journey through this life. Let no harm come to her until she reaches her safe and peaceful passing. To do anything else would be beyond monstrous. A crime against all that is good.

I don't want to go forward, don't want to reach the end of the pages, don't want there to be no more.

But just as my journal had an end, so must hers, and, God help me, the scent of her blood is luring me on. I have already guessed on which page it is that she spilled it out for me.

The convergence, the horrid symbolism – Alice you are dastardly and heartless to make sure that this came into my hands!

And still I turn the page.

Three perfect drops. Like flower petals.

Still fresh. Of course I know they are fresh. It was only three nights ago that I watched her cry herself to sleep. The color is still quite red. Though mostly absorbed by the paper fibers, I'm sure I could scrape some up with my fingernail. I could have a taste, however fleeting.

But it is her words, her _words_ that set the hook of my damnation.

"You don't have to be alone."

She can't have meant it. Not like _that_. With her blood right there. Inviting me to take her.

The images flood me, dark and violent. Her softness filling my arms. Her blood filling my mouth, as mine filled Carlisle's. Yes, I remember, because he cannot forget. One gulp, two gulps, three.

And then I will lie beneath her; I will be her ferry, across the river of Resentment, the river of no return.

Whatever she meant – and I can hardly know, since her mind is a mystery – it _cannot_ be _that._

But it doesn't matter, because now I can think of nothing else.

The cedar sprig that marked the page slips out and falls to the floor.

* * *

_A/N:_

_~~~ If I had a rose tree, I would put its thorn against my heart … ~~~_

_Bella is remembering the story of the Nightingale and the Rose._

h t t p : / / ebooks . adelaide . edu . au/w/wilde/oscar/happy/chapter2 . html

_It would seem that she has read Oscar Wilde, too …_

_~~~~ So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing beneath the Student's window._

_"Give me a red rose," she cried, "and I will sing you my sweetest song."_

_But the Tree shook its head._

_"My roses are red," it answered, "as red as the feet of the dove, and redder than the great fans of coral that wave and wave in the ocean-cavern. But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year." "One red rose is all I want," cried the Nightingale, "only one red rose! Is there no way by which I can get it?"_

_"There is a way," answered the Tree; "but it is so terrible that I dare not tell it to you."_

_"Tell it to me," said the Nightingale, "I am not afraid."_

_"If you want a red rose," said the Tree, "you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart's-blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine." ~~~~_

* * *

_"River of Resentment" = The River Styx. "Styx" means "shuddering", such as that induced by the loathing of death. It is a cognate of "stygos", which means hatred/ abhorrence._

h t t p : / / www . britannica . com/EBchecked/topic/570397/Styx

h t t p : / / www . theoi . com/Khthonios/PotamosStyx . html


	44. La Push

**La Push**

I almost remember how to get to La Push. It wasn't really that long ago, the last time I went. It was after services for Grandma. Uncle Billy had invited us all to come to the beach for a sunset bonfire. Mom didn't feel too comfortable. She didn't know anyone there very well. I didn't either, really. Summer visits had been short. I didn't even know then that it was going to be my last visit for a long while.

I don't have to remember the way to get there, now. Since no Cullens are coming, we all fit into Tyler's van. He's the one driving. It feels strange, to be inside the vehicle that almost killed me. I feel like Jonah swallowed by the whale.

I miss Edward.

I miss my Gran.

The beach had been filled with people that evening. Little kids running everywhere. I was too old to run with them, too young to sit with the grown-ups. Jake was really the only one I knew. His sisters were with their boyfriends. The elders held a sing, as the fire blazed on the beach, and the sun, such a rare sight, went down over the water. I can't remember the words. Maybe they were in Quileute. Maybe there were no words, just a chanting that rose and fell, mournful and strong. And someone was beating a big drum.

I've been quiet for so long that Angela has noticed. Eric and Mike and Tyler are carrying on about which movie is going to be the best this year – "300", or "Transformers", or "Sweeney Todd" – so she has a moment to reach over and squeeze my hand.

"We can hang out while the guys are all surfing," she promises. "It'll be fun."

I still miss Edward. And Gran.

Everyone is pretty much agreeing that "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is going to be for pussies. Our group is hard-core. We go surfing in the almost rain.

* * *

The beach is like I remember it. It's wide and it's flat, hemmed in by the headlands, with sea stacks breaking up through the waves far out. I can't find the driftwood log that I sat on that night, though. The ones I see all look different. Four years is a long time for driftwood, I guess.

Angela is as good as her word. She's hanging out here with me at the van while the guys and Lauren are out in the water with their boards. Jessica kind of drifts back and forth between us and the shallows, waving at Mike and wishing she owned a wetsuit. It really is still way too cold for her to go out on his board with him. Only the tenth of March. Not even the Ides yet.

I pull off another couple of Twizzlers for Angela and me. The cold makes them taste nutritious.

"Mike's asked Jessica to prom already," Angela says.

I knew that. Jessica told _everybody_ within about two hours of him asking. And then she Facebooked it when she got home.

There's a big old white elephant sitting in the van with us.

"There's still time, right? I mean, a lot of guys haven't asked anyone yet."

"Ange."

"I'm hopeless, aren't I …"

"Maybe he's just shy."

"Eric? Are you kidding me?"

"I mean shy with girls. He's shorter than you. Guys have a thing about height. Maybe he thinks you wouldn't want a guy that you have to look down at. Especially in heels."

"I'd wear flats. I'd totally wear flats. I saw this really pretty pair of ballet shoe sandals …"

"So ask him. Ask him if he wants to go with you. What's the worst thing that could happen?"

"Oh, Bella." And she squeezes my hand, real tight. Everybody in the whole school saw the worst thing that could happen.

"I was just trying to be nice to him. Nobody's ever nice to any of them. Ever."

Neither of us says anything. Edward didn't have to be as rude to me as he was. Maybe they really _are _all stuck up and clannish. But then why would he bring me the medicine? And put himself between me and death. And the journal. I still can't figure out what that was all about. I can't figure him out at all.

I think of the Edward who wrote all those things. I think of his handwriting, and the fountain pen. Why did he have to die? So young like that. Why did I have to give everything to Edward? I have nothing now, nothing to remember that boy with. I feel like my chest is going to cave in. Why did Edward have to be so mean to me?

And I suddenly realize: he's an Indian giver. He gives things to me and then takes them back. But that's not right either. Because I'm the one who gave the journal back to him. He never asked for it back. Maybe he meant me to keep it. Maybe his feelings were hurt that I gave it back. I don't think he's said a word about the scrapbook to anyone. At least not yet. Did he like it, then?

I'm completely confused now, and don't know what to think.

There's a bunch of kids walking toward us on the beach. I never even saw them arrive. Maybe they came from one of the trails through the woods. Must have. I recognize Jacob as they get closer.

There's no one else here but our group, and so Mike and Tyler and everybody come in from the surf to say hi. It's a public access beach. It's not like we're trespassing or anything, but we are on tribal land. And these are the kids who call this beach home. Jacob and I say 'hey' to each other as introductions go around: Paul, Embry, and Sam. I sort of remember Sam. He looks like a grown-up, now, which he sure didn't before. He's wearing his hair all long. They all are. Not making anything of it, just there. I break off Twizzlers for everybody. I'm really glad I brought them.

"You surfing, Bella?" Sam asks, with quite a lot of disbelief.

"Definitely not." He could have seen that for himself. I'm pretty sure I hear Jake growl at him, and I do my best not to laugh.

"You guys should stay and keep Bella company," Jessica says. "Her date bailed."

"Edward Cullen, resident weirdo," Mike adds.

"Resident evil," the kid named Embry mutters.

_What the hell?_

"She was just trying to be nice," Angela defends. "It's no big thing. Anyway, they're all doing stuff for their mom, today."

Sam smirks at that, and gives me a hard look at the same time. "The Cullens don't come here," he says. Like that's the last word. Period.

Tyler makes half-hearted invitations to the Quileute boys to hang out with us for the barbeque. They're not really interested. They look like they've got something else to do. Sam reminds us to bury our fire with sand before we go. I'm pretty sure that's code for "Make sure you take all your garbage with you when you leave."

Everybody goes back to what they were doing before – the townies to surfing, the Quileutes to patrolling their beach. Jacob hangs back to stay with me, and this leaves Angela free to go check out tidal pools with Eric.

Jacob bums another Twizzler off of me, and punches me softly in the shoulder.

"Hey, you good?" he asks.

"Always am."

He laughs at that, around his mouthful of cherry red sweet. "Wanna walk?"

I do, actually. I really do.

… … …

The sea on our left is all dark and grey. The waves are choppy out past the surf line. We walk on the mist-wet sand, dodging the odd wave that comes up higher onto the beach. To our right, the boulders and forest are every shade of black.

Just walking feels good, like I've done it before, and it's good: good to be here, good to remember my Gran. And Uncle Billy with both his legs. Did he have a shell and a raven's wing? Was he smudging smoke out over the water, blessing Gran's spirit as we all said goodbye? It's not a memory. Just a picture in my mind. Ever since Jacob said his Dad had put a blessing on the truck. Come to think of it, the truck had probably been here, too – younger, redder – the back of it filled with kids hitching a ride because most days they walked to everywhere.

I could almost be happy; except that I can't get Embry and Sam's comments out of my mind. The flinty look in their eyes.

_The Cullens don't come here._

Is this why Edward blew me off?

"So how come the Cullens aren't welcome out here?" I ask, as we pass a twisted grey skeleton of a tree, lying down along the highest tide mark.

Jacob shoots me a look. A little alarmed. A little worried.

"You caught that, huh?"

_Jeez, Jacob._

But he doesn't go on, so I have to prod.

"Is there some kind of, like, bad blood between the Cullens and the Quileutes?"

Jacob lets out a short, barking laugh. "Bad blood! Huh! You're funny, Bella."

"Well?"

"They're palefaces. We don't like their kind."

"Jacob, _I'm_ a paleface."

"Not _that_ pale."

"So, what, now the Quileutes are getting all racist or something?"

"Bella, it's nothing. Embry and Sam, they were just horsing around."

Our feet have carried us pretty far from the rest of the group. I can see Mike and Tyler trying to show off on their surfboards. Lauren is out there with them, not taking a back seat to anyone. Jacob's friends have drifted on almost to the far curve of the headland. I wonder if they'll walk back this way or just go up through the woods. Eric and Angela are out of sight somewhere, and Jessica is in a quiet spot, ankle deep, waving to Mike again. They all look distant and small. I can't hear any sound but the waves.

"My Dad says your Dad wouldn't let Dr. Cullen treat him," I press. "Is that part of this whole Quileute / Cullen … thing?"

"That was two years ago, Bella. They'd just blown into town. Who knew if the guy was a quack or what?"

"My Dad says he's good. Real good."

Neither of us is walking any more. Jacob has his arms crossed over his chest, and is scowling out to sea. I look at him and realize, _dammit, _he's taller than me! Not by much. Yet. But a little. When did that happen? And the boy isn't giving me any answers at all. He's as bad as Edward Cullen.

We stand here, not talking, while the wind kind of whips at us. It carries wisps of mist down from the forest, and stings a little, with the salt. Everything is dark and cold and damp, and I wish with all my heart for the Phoenix sun.

No.

I wish for the sun of here. Like the one I saw going down as we were singing for Gran. I miss her. I hardly ever got to see her at all. And then she died. And now Jacob's going all stoic and silent red man on me.

Sam and Embry's words had been hard and final. There hadn't been any joking in their faces at all. I've just asked Jake six ways to Sunday and he's blown me off just like Edward did. Stands there scowling – not at me, but not giving an inch, either. Like there's some deep dark secret that palefaces aren't allowed to know. Even though I still remember the smells of his mother's cooking.

My chest hurts when I breathe.

"My Dad and your Dad went to war together", I say softly. "I thought that counted for something."

"What?"

"You're treating me like an _outsider_, Jake! You're treating me like an outsider."

He looks at me, all puzzled and pained.

"Bella, it's not like you grew up on the rez. You didn't even grow up in town."

He might as well have driven a stake through my heart.

"THAT WASN'T MY FAULT!" I yell. Into the wind, because I'm already running. I can't feel my body. I just hear the slap of my feet on the wet sand. There are rocks here, too, but I can't see them. Only water in front of my eyes.

Jacob's voice comes from far away.

"Bella! Jesus Christ!"

He's chasing me. I didn't know I could run this fast. Feet pounding. Waves pounding. Suddenly, there isn't any sand left. I feel a rock under my foot, and my ankle turning. I'm going down. Going to smash my face. Break bones. Be ugly for the rest of my life.

Then I'm caught, by arms and a warm body. Jacob has me. "Jesus Christ, Bella! What the HELL!"

I can't talk. He sits me down on a wet, crusty rock. "What the hell?" He just keeps repeating that, rocking me, wrapping me up in warmth. I smell it again, the memory of wood smoke and wolf-pelts from when he was a baby. He holds on, but looking at me from time to time, too, because he's younger than me, and I'm a girl, and it's embarrassing.

I calm down. I can breathe again. Wipe my face on my parka. Talk.

"You're not going to tell me anything, are you?" I ask at last.

Jacob is quiet for a really long time. I can almost feel him fighting with himself. Finally he says, "I'm not an elder, Bella. I can't tell stories."

But he's told me a lot, right there. I feel the wind crawl down my spine. I'm back in the parking lot with Edward's arm around me, and the door of Tyler's van collapsing against his other, outstretched hand.

"What kind of stories?"

There are stories running around the school, now. Three must be the magic number. Ever since the groundskeeper at that lodge was found, all the others have been dredged up to rehash.

"Come on, Bella, don't you people tell your kids scary stories to make them behave? You know, like the bogeyman? Or Sasquatch or something?"

Or chupacabra. That's what all the boys are saying, now. As they describe it all in way more gore than there really was. My dad said the lake water had washed everything clean. But the body had been in pieces. "Badly mauled and partially eaten" is how the reporter put it, with the green trees and yellow tape behind him.

"Jacob, Edward Cullen saved my life. If there's something wrong with him … or his family … don't you think I need to know about it?"

Jacob looks at me sharply. "Is he trying to ask you out?"

"No." Not in a million years.

"Good!"

"Hey!"

"They're not from around here Bella. They're city slickers. Their kind never stay long. All they care about is themselves. They'll suck you dry and leave you for dead."

I realize that Jacob must be just saying what he's heard his Dad say about the Cullens. How could Uncle Billy and my Dad have such opposite views of the same family?

But Jacob is squeezing my shoulders with his teenage-boy, too-big hands. He wants me to listen.

"Steer clear of him, Bella. Not everything that's pretty is good."

* * *

_A/N: With deepest gratitude to my dear beta, **averysubtlegift**, who reminds me that a chapter needs meat as well as bones. To **geo3**, who is WRITING AGAIN! *fangirl squee* Fortune's Gate!_

_Thank you dear readers, and just fyi, the wolfboys here are the originals:_

_h t t p : / / images2 . fanpop . com / images / photos / 2600000 / Sam-Embry-the-quileute-tribe-2660777-604-431 . jpg_


	45. Rapunzel

**Rapunzel**

It's all falling apart now. Ephraim's grandson called Carlisle at the hospital this morning.

Dusk is near as we pass through the woods. All the grays and blacks and greens. They are familiar to us now, after two years. Not the same as the patchwork of logged out land and decimated wilderness of '36, but known to us again, in a layer of new trees and new memories.

The Quileutes were not happy to see us when we returned to this part of the world. They were not happy to see their grandfathers' ghost stories standing in front of them. They even harbored an irrational fear that our presence in Forks would somehow draw others of our kind to come.

I should be hunting. I miss Isabella. I can hardly think of anything else. I am exiled, now, from her bedroom. Since giving me back my journal, and her scrapbook with it, she has taken to sleeping in the rocking chair. How can this be good for her? All doubled up in that hardwood embrace, wrapped in those thin quilts, too close to the drafty window, even with the radiator just beneath it. I want to slip in and return her to the bed where she belongs, but I can't. She will know. If she doesn't already. What _does_ she know? Trapped outside the glass, I spend my nights wondering.

She went to the reservation yesterday with her school friends. This morning William Black has called Carlisle to summon us to the border. None of us thinks this is a coincidence. Since our 'reunion' with them, the tribe had ignored us completely, and we had kept well away from La Push. Until now.

We approach the line between their territory and ours. The place where the treaty was first set down, not on paper, but in smoke and gifts and food. The meat for them, the blood for us. The clearing is long-since overgrown, the fire pit covered in wet ferns and a mossy, rotting log.

We approach at human speed. Jasper is holding us calm, to balance our hair-trigger vigilance. The Quileutes are already there, of course. Chief Black is seated on a litter, a blanket covering his legs – both the whole one and the stump. His cohort – Harry Clearwater, Quil Ateara, Kevin Littlesea and Joshua Uley – bear him in the air stoically. They wear jeans and flannel shirts, and jackets that have seen better days. They look like lumberjacks, or hunters, but with darker skin. The new young men of the tribe stand in a semi-circle around them, slender and sharp.

Our family comes to a halt at a careful distance. I hear Esme's thoughts. How these are the only human people who _know_ us, who _remember_ us, from one generation to the next. Her sudden swell of emotion leaks through Jasper to all of us, a sadness, almost a longing, as she searches the faces before us for the faces of the dead. Now I can't help wondering how many times we will return here; and what will it be like, as this tiny tribe's generations roll on through time? Will there come a time when they are no longer here? And at that, I know I can never come back here again, because _Bella_ will not be here. The thought almost cripples me, and I have to force myself to stand still without moving a muscle.

Jasper's mind flickers to me. _Mind yourself! _He makes a point of reading and showing us the Quileutes' temper – suspicion, hostility, anger. Pride. I scan their minds. I see the dark inside of a makeshift lodge, smell cedar smoke. There is quiet talking in their language, which I should have taken the trouble to learn. It's about the bear. They don't believe it is an animal. An old man sings. The young men are putting on skins.

Now I see the dark pelt that Chief Black has draped casually over one shoulder. One could almost not notice it there; the flattened face and ears are obscured in his lap. He has come in full regalia. I relay everything to my family in our quick, off-pitched speech. The wolves catch it, but cannot make out our words.

"We will all speak openly here, Edward," Carlisle rebukes. For everyone's benefit.

_If this were a declaration of war, he would wear the wolf head over his own. Let us not give cause where none is offered._

William Black speaks.

"White folks are saying there's a rogue bear in these parts."

Carlisle answers.

"We've heard the reports."

I see our family through the eyes of these Others. Pale as ghosts. More still than the trees. We are unnatural in this place, dead things in their living world. I hate them for thinking this of my family and me.

Clearwater's eyes flicker up at the crow that glides above, briefly visible between the treetops.

"Have you seen anything?" Black asks.

Carlisle replies cautiously. "We don't usually interfere, but … three deaths. We have begun looking."

"Dogs won't track it."

It's an accusation. I hear it in his thoughts. Jasper feels it. We all know it.

"The conditions have not been favorable for scent," Carlisle points out evenly. There's no denying it. The security guard's body had been out in a soaking sleet for hours. The girl … had not even all been in one place, and the trail had been cold for weeks in any case. The groundskeeper's remains had been found under the thin ice of the lake.

"Bears usually hang around if there's still meat on the bones. Sometimes cache up. This one's just killing and running."

"Chief Black. You can see our good faith in our eyes."

"Bring us the head and the claws and the pelt, then." A challenge. To prove that it is only an animal. "We'll know if it's the one."

"So will we."

Black eyes Carlisle, and all of us, with a stony regard. We know we have been dismissed. It rankles. None of us are accustomed to being treated this way. I have to fight hard not to see them as their ancestors were, captured unwillingly in the lenses of the first photographers, clad in trade blankets and skins, scraggly savages pushed almost to the sea.

We take our leave, backing away for several steps before turning to go.

"Old man!"

Carlisle turns back.

"I know where your son goes at night."

None of us moves a muscle. The eyesight of the entire group of natives fills my mind. The forest is shrouded in deep twilight. Its trees surround us all. In these aboriginals' vision they stand and whisper like relatives. My family and I look like pale spikes of stone in their midst. Unseen, the crow calls from far away. Others answer.

"As do I, Chief Black."

"The treaty stands."

"We have always upheld it and always will."

"That girl is family. We're watching."

"Her father is also my friend. None of us will allow harm to come to her." What is true now is all that matters, all that we will ever say to them.

"Your boy – "

"Put himself and all of us at great risk for her sake."

No one speaks for a long time. In the end, Black allows, "I can't deny that." He looks at me. "But you've got no business with her. She's not your people."

Perhaps it is Jasper, perhaps it is this place – I can almost feel Esme's spirit, like real arms, embracing me.

Black raises his right hand. "We have spoken."

And then it is their band that melts into the darkness, too subtly even for our vampire eyes to follow.

* * *

I've had a bad day. Actually, I've had a bad week. Jessica is right. Edward does stare at me in Biology. I never catch him at it of course, but that's because I never turn to look at him. But I can feel his eye-beams boring into the back of my skull.

I should get home, because I have a lot of homework, but I don't want to do it yet. Instead I'm driving around kind of randomly. I realize I'm heading out on 110 toward La Push, and I don't want to go there. I didn't get any answers there at all.

I take a turn off the main road, probably not a good idea, because now I'm going to get lost, but I just need to get to a quiet place somewhere. The days are getting longer now; I have time. Before I know it, the road's not paved any more. It winds on and on and I figure if I don't turn off of it I'll be able to find my way back.

The road makes a long, lazy turn to the left, and there I see it, out through the trees. A windswept bluff, overlooking the ocean.

The track had been getting fainter and fainter all along. It's pretty much petered out here by the edge of the trees. I drive the truck just a little bit further. Out to where it's just grass and gravel, all mixed up with tangles of wild blackberry.

I park where I am, and get out. It's still a long walk to the end of the bluff. There's no one here but me and my monster. My refuge. With the good luck grass, and the warm inside.

The colors all around are dark – the pines behind me, the rocks … and always the clouds. The truck really _does_ sit all red against it; but faded in real life, like bleached out bones.

"Hi, Uncle Billy", I whisper. "Just coming to pay my respects."

The wind whistles around the bluff pretty sharp, and cold, too. It'll probably rain in a little while.

I want to get closer to the edge of the cliff, because I see something out to sea. Not orcas. Something even more miraculous. Something I haven't seen since I came to Forks.

The sun.

Way out there, there's a hole in the sky. And a bar of sunlight shining down through it, onto the water, making it sparkle like a million diamonds. Maybe it's warm out there. Maybe the orcas have come up to play under that sunlight, just under the surface of the water. Who can say?

I don't have any shell, and nothing to burn in it if I did, no raven's wing to send the smoke out to the light. But I have feet. And they're walking me right out to the edge. With the wind blowing in my hair, making it stray outward, like smoke. And filling my jacket, like a sail.

The wind makes sound. Away behind me, up in the tops of the trees. It speaks to me more than people do.

My Dad tries. I know he does.

"_How was your day, kid?"_

What can I tell him? That I'm just skimming along on the surface? Like an ice-skater on my life? He doesn't hound me. He knows I'm leaving soon. A year and some. Again. I know it, too. Skimming. Like a rock skipped out over the ocean.

"_Lauren got her prom dress already. Can you believe it? She went online."_

"_She's still standing by Tyler even after he got his face all chewed up in the wreck. I never thought she'd do that."_

"_Ah, he'll be fine. Not like he broke his nose or something__. Now that he's got the stitches out it'll all fade."_

"_Yeah, but still."_

"_So Angela, hot stuff, Eric finally stepped up!"_

Her shy smile.

"_Yeah, after SHE asked HIM!"_

Her face falls. Did I give her the wrong advice? Will she still be my friend after prom? At graduation? Afterwards … ?

Another goodbye. Too old for friendship bracelets, now.

The wind sighs, sharp and cold, bringing the resin and pine-needle smell from the trees. It's blowing out to sea. Reminding me of the scent that haunts my room now. It's Edward's smell. I know it is. I smelled it when he came to my hospital room, the day of 'the wreck'. When I was standing _that_ close to him, grabbing his shoulders and trying to kick him in the shins for lying to me. Why does he have to lie?

Why does he have to leave his scent all over my Grandma's old rocking chair?

Why do I have to sit in it night after night? Balled up in the quilts – which smelled like him too, until they faded. Pretending it's his chest that I'm curled up against, and not the hard wooden rungs of the chair back. His arms, not the chair arms, holding me together.

I don't understand. If he cares, then why won't he ever talk to me? If he doesn't care, then why save me? Why risk showing himself like that?

And I still don't know what it is that he showed me that day. Super speed. Super strength. Eyes that change from black to amber, and sometimes back to black again.

Cool, sweet breath on my face.

And secrets and lies. Sneaking into my bedroom – when I'm not there? When I AM there? But I can never catch him. He's worse than Santa Claus. Presents and all.

Jacob won't tell me anything either. Even though he knows. I'm sure he does. The closest thing to the little brother I never had. As much as said I'm no sister of his. Even while he's holding me tight.

"_Steer clear of him, Bella. Not everything that's pretty is good."_

The wind pulls past me and my eyes follow, out to the tiny circle of sunlight. Sparkling. Dancing. Like joy on the water. With orcas underneath.

I stretch out my arms and ask.

_Come, wind, blow_

_Blow me away_

_Like smoke_

_Let me grow thin_

_and blow away_

_Like smoke upon the wind._

* * *

_A/N: Gratitude as always to my beta, averysubtlegift. And to you who come to read._


	46. The Diver

**The Diver**

_Do you really want her **dead**, Edward?_

Alice is in Study Hall; I am in Calculus class. She thinks, and I formulate intentions to speak. She picks my words up out of the future and then replies. Not a breath of air is disturbed.

Me: _You have no right to ask me that!_

Her, wounded and angry: _You think you're the only one who loves her! You can read minds and so you think you know everything. But you don't!_

Me, just as angry: _You're a fine one to talk!_

_Our gifts are **imperfect**, Edward. Because **we** are imperfect. We see what we want to see, what we already believe._

Arguing at a distance like this makes us appear to be daydreaming. We must be careful, very careful, not to seem absent for too long.

_Just once, Edward, stop reading my mind and just see. See me. See what I see. _

I hear in thought as she whispers, "_Jasper, help me." _

The two of them have been inseparable since he returned, but he doesn't like what she is asking of him. "_You're meddling, my darling. You're playing with fire."_

She shows me anyway, without his help: moment after moment after moment, herself and Bella, best friends forever. I can almost understand. Alice has been as helpless as I have been. This tiny sliver of possible future has _pulled_ at her, as hard as Bella's blood pulls me. Now it burns, brighter than all the rest. For her at least.

_I don't care! Bella is alive and well, and I intend to keep her that way!_

_But you can't Edward. Don't you see? _

And she shows me Bella's old age. How she will have many years of infirmity at the end. A weak heart. Difficulty breathing. Years of that. Confined to a wheelchair by a stroke when she is eight-two. I am given her half-sagging face, her mottled skin, the sores on her thin buttocks that can never heal because, much as her granddaughter loves her, she does not live nearby in those years, and the aides who take care of her don't get her out of the chair enough, don't turn her enough when she is in bed.

_I won't condemn her to be what we are!_

_Are we really so horrible, Edward? You **love** her! **And she loves you**. _

Well, not quite exactly. I hadn't been able to refrain from pestering Alice to show me what Bella's final inscription in the scrapbook meant. Not that I ever asked her outright. But each of my moments of temptation materialized to her as an aborted future, and so, in a rare moment of lightness for these days, she had demanded of me twenty-three pieces of notebook paper. On them she had written out each of the "treatises" that Bella had composed and then discarded.

She thinks I'm gay. She wants to offer herself to me as a friend.

Emmett and Jasper got a great laugh out of that. My heart just ached for her. This girl. This girl.

Pledging herself with her blood. Who does such a thing?

I cannot forget those three drops on the page. Completely dried now, though if I moistened them with my tongue I am certain I could still lift that essence up from the trapping fibers and into my mouth. They lie there, like an evil omen. And yet I cannot stop myself from opening to them every night, to stare, and yes, to sniff. It is the only page I turn to.

The bell has rung, and it is time to gather our things and go home once more. We all converge at my locker and loiter. After Bella ambushed me at my car, I can no longer stand to be in the parking lot with her. I _hurt_ her. Again. I am _always_ hurting her. I don't want to.

I don't want to.

And yet, surely that is better than to encourage her affections – even if it were only by failing to discourage them. The _real_ consequences of her ever drawing close to me loom in my mind. They are not pretty.

I have Jasper's memories to thank for that.

Encouraging his own affections, and those of his prey. Giving them, as Peter had put it, "a happier death than God ever will."

He is completely sensory. Breasts, and musk, and heart beating tattoo through sternum to his lips. The bite. The blood. The carnal ecstasy. Shared. Redoubled. Such exquisite heat. Below. And in his mouth.

Too late, the surge of panic, as teeth and venom chase the bliss of orgasm, and his victim realizes that this embrace can no more be moved than a concrete wall. For perhaps a minute there is gasping and squirming, until, starved of blood, the heart fibrillates. The body spasms as seizures take the dying brain. And then nothing. Nothing.

I have my own memories. "Pretty boy," they all thought. Until I tore into them.

Jasper feels me. _What are you thinking, brother?_

Nothing. Nothing but what lies beneath the glittery surface of each of us.

I hang back inside the building, my family with me, waiting for Bella and her venerable red truck to disappear from the sight of anyone within range.

The sub-rosa conversation between Alice and me continues, spoken now, though beyond the range of human hearing, as we all meander to the library and pretend to look at reference materials.

"You can't keep her alive, Edward. _One way or another she is doomed to die_."

She shows me again the sum of all possibilities, like some unholy triptych.

The simple casket, holding its lifeless husk, a cicada cast. The thin arms crossed over the withered chest are empty now. The future in which Bella carried my journal with her into the earth has been given back to me.

Her dead, drained corpse beneath me – still sweet, still soft, still warm – for a little while. _Never_ run from a vampire. Her fragrance fades, changes, as she cools and stiffens. And still I cannot let go.

Her white beauty, silent-chested at my side.

"Why won't you choose a _good_ death for her?"

How can she even _suggest_ that it is mine to choose?

And the wolves. They would never forgive this. Never.

For once, Rosalie is on my side, her eyes shooting at Alice like a double-barreled nail gun. Jasper growls.

I see that we have killed half an hour at least. Bella is long gone.

The five of us finally file out of the school's main doors, and the cold air of outside hits us as Alice answers me: "No matter what you do or don't do, you're still choosing – "

She gasps, and nearly doubles over. Before anyone can notice, we all have circled around her so no one can see.

"_No!_ Oh, Bella!"

Emmett and Rosalie are instantly on guard. Jasper has his hands on his wife's shoulders. He feels, but only I can _see_ what she has seen.

Bella falling through the air. A cliff above, the sea below.

"Alice, _when_?"

"I don't _know_, Edward. I can't _see_!"

"Concentrate!"

"Get your hands off her!" In an instant I'm on my back on the ground with Jasper looming over me, his eyes wide and black. "The Sam Hill, Ed'rd!"

"Stop it!" Rosalie hisses. "There's others about!"

Alice's vision flashes again, and I recognize the cliff. She does, too, of course. They all tracked me to that headland when I had run there from Bella's room. The day she almost died. The night of her books and her quilts and her heavenly scent, binding me in their toils.

I can feel again the water in my lungs, when I was brought back up from my dive.

And the night before that. Standing in that very same place. The medicine paper, all fragrant with her, unfolded in my hands. The briar patch inside, the three red roses tucked among the green. The "Thank You", written in her careful script.

All of it – ripped to shreds and thrown to the wind, and the black waves below.

I climb to my feet, faster than is humanly possible, but I don't care.

"We have to go there, _now_!"

The rest of them follow me, complaining, as Alice explains. We leave as we had come: the three freaks in my car, Emmett and Rose in the jeep. We push our machines to the limit once we are free of the town and its traffic.

I want to abandon the vehicles and run straight there. But the risk of exposure is too great. I hate the limitations of rubber and steel and gearboxes, hate the curves in the road, HATE that it becomes dirt and slows my car that much more. The light in Alice's vision could be right _now_.

Why would she do such a thing? Why would she jump? _Why?_ As rude as I have been to her, surely not … but I have been far worse than rude to her. I have stalked her and she must know it. I have approached her and avoided her. Given her things that she can't understand. And then taken them away.

"Jasper, has she been despondent?"

It's unfair to ask him this. He's had his hands full just with me. When has he had leisure to monitor her feelings? Or cause, for that matter? All of our resources have been turned inward.

"Edward, if you can't see that she's in love with you – "

"The whole female student body is in love with me."

Jasper snorts, and echoes his wife. _You can read everybody's mind, but all you can feel is yourself._

"She thinks I'm _gay_."

"When's that ever stopped a girl?"

I feel like I might throw up, if I were human and had tangible stomach contents. Would a girl do that? Throw herself off a cliff because the boy she has fallen in love with can never love her in return?

At last we reach the long left turn, the thinning trees, the bluff in sight, the ocean beyond.

And God help me, there she is.

I feel as though a vise is clamping my throat. She stands, back to us, arms stretched out at her sides, hair streaming forward, as if she will set sail on the wind. For a moment I can say nothing. She is so lovely there. I cannot help but think of the statue of Christ the Redeemer over Rio.

But we are in time. We are _in time_. Thank God.

I recover my wits and yell.

"Bella!"

Even without the sudden blinding flash of Alice's vision, I know my mistake. But the breath has left my lungs. The syllables of her name have shot out like arrows from my lips, and no power above or below can call them back.

Startled by my shout, Isabella spins around, arms still outstretched.

Too quickly. Too close to the edge.

I watch in utter horror, as balance deserts her and she tilts away from solid land and out into the void. She does not even _try_ to right herself. My cursedly perfect vampire vision sees it all as if in slow motion. Her wide-eyed gaze flashes across my face, then drifts upward to the lowering grey of the sky … and … lets go. Is she truly so willing to give up her life on this earth? _Why?_

Even before her form has disappeared beyond the lip of the cliff I have launched myself forward to catch her.

"_Bella!"_ Alice's scream echoes among the trees.

I am too late by far. She is already free falling downward by the time I reach the cliff edge. Even at vampire speed. There is nothing for it but to hurl myself after her, try to plummet faster even than she, to catch her on the way down and somehow break her fall.

Halfway down. I've almost reached her. The foaming green surf draws lazily back, baring huge, jagged teeth of black rock. There will not be even a shred of water to cover them when we hit.

Almost there! I grab Bella as I pass – too quickly, too roughly. Again.

No time! Twist! Twist my body under hers; gather her arms and legs, make her a ball held against my chest. Cover her face against flying shards, because there _will_ be shards, as my back smashes against the tumbled ledge of basalt.

We hit, and Bella's shriek tears through my ears.

How could I think that my unyielding body would do anything but transmit the shock of impact right into her?

My mind floods with ghastly imaginings of her ruptured organs, as the water towers above us, ready to heave back against the cliff, to smother and roll and drown us under its weight, grind us against the stone, and impale her soft parts on the twisted spars of driftwood caught between.

The sight of it resurrects a dream – long lost, dead and forgotten with my human flesh – a nightmare of lake Michigan rising up from its banks as my parents and I were walking along the shore. The memory superimposes over the present: a huge grey wave rolling in from far out, rearing like an arched wall over the beach, and falling to engulf us.

The terror I felt in that forgotten sleep is _here_ and _now,_ in my eternal waking, with this girl lying tender and unresisting in my arms. She is not unconscious; her eyes are open, though they cannot register the nanoseconds as I do. We are barely wet yet, but will be, before she can even fill her lungs again after her scream.

Something in me breaks. What grudge does the universe bear against this Bella? To throw her into my path, into the path of a van, of my family, and now this murdering wave? I won't allow it. I _won't_.

The water is heavy. Tons and tons of it. Pulled by the weight of the entire planet itself. But I am strong. Isabella is already gathered securely against me. I have only to put my feet under me as the sea crashes down. Pinch closed her nose and mouth, and knife upwards with her through what is, after all, only water.

We are pushed, of course, right to the cliff-face. But I am ready to push us back off with one foot. What counts is that we have won to the surface. I keep Bella's face in free air. She chokes and gasps, but she is breathing.

"Edward!"

"Shh, it's all right."

I inventory her body as quickly as I can. Miracles are granted. She is whole. The wave is on back-draw again, and I use every ounce of that momentum and my own powerful kicking, to pull us free from her death.

It works.

It works.

Bella clings to me tightly, as I swim us away, far from the crashing and the foaming and the bitter rocks, out to the surging swells beyond. Every few moments, her hand moves down to my back, seeking my skin through the rips in my jacket and shirt. Yet again I have ruined good clothing. She is looking for injury – blood, torn flesh, broken bones. And finding none. My name falls over and over from her lips in small cries.

The frigid water surrounds us, with its smells of salt and spray and sea wrack, and coming rain. I stop swimming, and let its peace overtake us. Here, I can tolerate Bella's closeness, even the scent of her blood is tempered, and all I know is the sweetness of her holding me, trusting me, worried for me.

I could stay like this with her forever. I _want_ to stay like this with her forever. I imagine it. Lying together on the heaving breast of the sea, Bella's tender warmth cleaved to me, entering me, changing me – making me real again.

Violent shivering begins to wrack her body, and I am wrenched back from my fantasy. The sea is no benevolent mother, but a treacherous siren. I may be able to lie on the cold swells forever, but Bella cannot. The water is sucking the heat from her as surely and as ravenously as any vampire. Already I can feel the drop in her temperature. This – the cold – is what has tempered her scent, made it possible for me to clasp her to me without killing her.

All sweetness vanishes like the false dream that it was, and I am left with nothing but the truth of my brutish selfishness. I must get Bella back to land.

I scan the water, searching for a safe path.

"Isabella."

She lets me call her that. Doesn't correct me, or say, "Bella, just Bella," but only holds onto me tighter and murmurs my name again. It's foolish, of course, to imagine that she has allowed me some special dispensation, but still I feel a thin flame burn to life inside my chest.

"We have to get back … up there."

She follows the jerk of my chin to the cliff top far away. My brothers and sisters are all at the edge, calling to us. It's too distant, and their voices are too wind-scattered for her to hear.

"Okay," she breathes, between chattering teeth.

"I can't carry you and climb at the same time. You'll have to hold on to me. Piggyback. Can you do it?"

"I think so. Yes. Yes, I can do it."

"Okay." I sidestroke, holding her to me. She lets me lay her on her back in the water, keeping her face above the chop. Occasionally we are doused as we make our way back toward the cliffs. I try to angle for an area with less surf, less rocks under the surface. There is not much to choose from.

I keep asking her if she is all right. She keeps telling me she is, keeps asking me if I am. We stop again twenty yards out, treading and bobbing in the swells. There is no more delaying this. She may well be going numb in her arms and legs, and then I will lose her.

"Bella, we're going to have to ride a wave in and then climb. When I tell you to, get on my back and hold on. Hold your breath until we get out of the water. It won't be long. Can you do it?"

"Yes. Yes, I can."

"You have to hold on, Bella."

"I will."

"Don't let go."

"I won't."

I maneuver her onto my back.

"Don't let go!"

"I won't." She takes a deep breath, and it's time. I move us from vertical to horizontal, bearing her as high as I can in the water, as the incoming wave takes us. Her lips move against the back of my neck, too soft even for herself to hear, but I do.

_Hold you forever._

Oh Bella.

I keep us in time with the wave, to ride the thickest part of the water. It slaps us hard against the cliff face, but I am ready, taking the impact with my hands and feet, keeping Bella's arms and legs clear.

And then I climb. Too fast and my movements will dislodge her, too slow and her strength will fail before we reach the top. Her heart beats between my shoulder blades. In the air now, I smell her blood. She is clamped to me like a limpet. Her arms and her legs and her breasts and her breath and the joint of her thighs – our clothes mean nothing. We are cold and we are sodden and we are whipped by an unforgiving wind, but still I feel every inch of her flesh, every secret spot of heat. And her blood, rushing, pounding, in her ears and mine, infusing every molecule of my awareness with red.

* * *

_A/N: This was another revision nightmare. To averysubtlegift, geo3, SaritaDreaming - I couldn't stop messing with it. All errors are my own._

_To everyone who stops by: Thank you for reading. And a bow to Chicklette for Jasper's memories of hunting human women._


	47. The Inn of the Seventh Happiness

**The Inn of the Seventh Happiness**

We make it to the top of the cliff. All his brothers and sisters are there. He's shivering, shuddering, violently. I'm cold, too. We're both cold. The water had been like ice, and the wind is still pulling at us. I'm too numb to wonder any more. How he could possibly have lived through our fall. The rocks. The waves. The climb.

Perhaps we are both already dead. Perhaps clinging to him in the frigid water was just my soul unable to let him go, unable to let go of this dream of life just yet. But if that's true, then I should have been dead – we _both_ should have been dead – since the van crash. I can't believe that. That the emergency room and my Dad and the journal and everything that has happened since Tyler's van kissed my truck has been some kind of half-way house between this world and the next. So Edward and I must still be alive now, too. It's just that I don't know how.

We've barely set foot at the top and already Edward is disentangling from me, pulling me forward off his back. I don't want him to. I want to stay, wrapped around him. But he's stronger than I am.

"Take her, Alice. Take her." In a desperate voice. As he practically throws me into his sister's arms. And bolts for the woods. His last words float back,

"I can't – "

"I'm taking her home, Edward," Alice calls. Her voice is like music.

He answers from out of sight. "Are you CRAZY?"

He must have stopped running.

"All roads lead to home, Edward. Trust me. All of her roads lead to our home."

"I hate you! I _hate_ you!"

As I stand here, shivering like to shake my bones apart, my teeth chattering, with Alice's arms wrapped tightly around me.

The clouds are lowering, and I think I feel a faint drizzle starting up. The little patch of sunlight that had been out over the water has disappeared. Alice is as cold as I am. Even her breath against my ear is cold.

I don't see Jasper any more. Maybe he's gone to find Edward. Emmett and Rosalie are jogging back toward the trail head. And Alice is … carrying me. Little Alice. She's jogging, too. Carrying me. And not even breathing hard.

"Emmett, you drive Bella's truck. I'm taking the Volvo."

* * *

As soon as we get back onto the real road, Alice drives like a bat out of hell. Part of me is still clinging to Edward in the sea, but enough of me is here in the car that I'm pressed all the way back in the seat, white-knuckling the handgrips. The tree trunks are strobing past us, black – grey – black – grey, and I worry about Alice and seizures.

I didn't _jump_ back there, I _fell_: so I speak up in a shaky voice.

"Alice … maybe the house _won't_ burn down before we get there … "

"Oh, Bella, I'm sorry. It's just you really need a hot bath and dry clothes."

She brakes and downshifts like silk, giving me a sympathetic glance with her golden eyes.

Do they _all_ have golden eyes?

"And _food._" She's still talking to me, or to herself – no, she has her cell phone out and is telling Emmett to swing by the supermarket on the way home. Her words blur past me, and the trees blur past the window, even though we're going a lot slower than we were. As if in a dream, I hear snatches of Emmett's voice.

"Aw, c'mon, Alice … … long that's gonna … … ole thing … … don't even … fourth … got her … fifty-two and … … fit to bust herself."

_My truck is a he …_

"Oughta make _Edward_ … "

"Can't," Alice answers him. "Edward's still playing fox and hound with Jasper in the woods."

They tease each other like real brothers and sisters. Or at least how I imagine brothers and sisters would be.

"Just deal, Emmett." Alice throws me another smile, sweet and kind and a little impish. Suddenly I feel as if a whole lifetime of loneliness is welling up through my heart.

Alice sees, and reaches for my hand. We're both still teeth-chattering cold.

"It's going to be all right, Bella, it really is. I'm pretty sure."

Alice reminds me of Angela. She looks at me when she talks to me. She hugs me with her golden eyes. But there's something about her, something wistful. Maybe she's been lonely, too.

I look out the window again and realize that I have absolutely no clue where we are. The road is winding up into green, green forest. I don't see any other cars.

"We're almost there, Bella, almost there."

* * *

The Cullen house is big and open. The outside drifts into it through the glass walls that face the gardens and the twisting driveway. Everything is greens and browns, with splashes and sprays of red and mauve and yellowy white – first flowers of the year. I don't even know their names, but they are giving off sweet hints of fragrance in the soft rain. The lawn glows like emerald in the waning light. At its edge, the pine trees sigh, dark and mysterious, with seven white aspen, standing like slender ghosts among them. The water patters down from the sky, and drips from all the eaves.

I turn around and around on the walk of natural stones. Alice lets me. They have a trellis gazebo all hung with a woody vine. Rocks and plantings meander behind it. I hear a trickle of running water, and another sound. _Tock_, it rings, as if through mist. Wait. _Tock_. The intervals are never quite the same.

This place is like a different world. Like a poem in a language I don't know. And Alice is leading me in at the door. She had the heat on full blast in the car all the way here, but her hands are still cool, even cooler than mine, even though I'm the one all wet through from the sea. Is this also part of what's wrong with her, I wonder?

"Come on, Bella," she says, pulling me across the threshold. "We have to get you changed."

There is a woman there to greet us. She is older than Alice and me, but not by very much. She's lovely. Just lovely. Her hair is almost the same color as my Mom's, and I suddenly miss my Mom like crazy. I wonder where she is and what she's doing. I realize that I'm never really going to live with my Mom again. Ever. I want to cry but I don't dare. Not here in this beautiful, perfect place.

Mrs. Cullen – that has to be who this is – reaches for me gently. Her fingertips just brush my hand. Her eyes are hazel gold, too, and her fingertips are cool, almost cold. And I can't ignore it any more. These people are not normal. They are different. Really, _really_ different.

_Steer clear of him, Bella. Not everything that's pretty is good._

"Bella. Come in. You gave us such a fright. Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?"

_And yet look how kind they are. _As I'm standing here inside their door: smelling of kelp, and tracking seawater onto the parquet. _I don't want to be afraid of them_.

Inside, the house is all creamy walls and polished wood, with burgundy and gold, and always, always the green, coming in through the windows from outside. Everything here is old. Heavy. Deep. Plush. I glimpse a huge fireplace, and the shiny black of a grand piano in a sunken great room beyond the spacious foyer.

Alice has her hand in mine again, steady as a rock in my shivering one.

"The guest bathroom's upstairs," she whispers. I let her lead me. The stairs are wide, gently curving, with a deeply polished banister. It's smooth and cool, and gives off a faint fragrance.

Set into the wall of the stairway is a larger-than-life hewn wood cross. I've never seen a cross tilted on its side like that before. It follows the slope of the stairs, as if, in climbing the stairs, one is walking up the cross. As if the stairs are Jacob's ladder. As if Alice and I are the spirit doves, going up and coming down. I wonder again if I'm alive, or if I'm dead.

We're already in the hall at the top, and Alice is saying, "I'm just going to get some dry clothes for you. Wait for me here, okay?"

"Okay."

The first part of the hall is actually a balcony. The view back past the stairs shows the great room again. I wonder who plays the piano? Maybe they all do.

Alice is back with a laundry basket heaped with really thick towels and what may be a dress or robe mixed in.

"This way." And she leads me a few steps down the hall to the guest bath. She shoulders her way in, and I follow. It's really … big. There's a shower _and_ a bathtub. The tiling looks like some kind of salmon colored marble. The cabinets are all in dark wood; there are little alcoves, and misty curtains and a big window that looks out on the back gardens, where the trickle of water and the _tock_ sound are still echoing softly. The soaps are carved like flowers and there's potpourri in a porcelain bowl and candles tucked in little recesses in the wall. I think of the bathroom in my Dad's house, with the creaky step on the stair, the utilitarian medicine-cabinet mirror over the sink, the fluorescent light, and the shower and toilet practically on top of each other – and for the first time in my life I feel like my Dad and my Mom and I are poor.

It's a horrible, disloyal thought, and I hate myself for thinking it. But it's also the truth. We're poor. I dig my hands into the pockets of my soggy jacket.

"My cell phone!"

It's gone. Lost in the sea when I fell. Probably smashed to pieces by now.

"It's okay, Bella. You can use our house phone." Alice's cool hand is on my shoulder, her eyes full of sympathy. I'd never thought to get insurance for the phone. I wonder how much it will cost to replace it. I think of myself with no way to call either parent, now, if I were ever out somewhere in an emergency.

"Do you want to use the phone, now?" she asks.

I should. But I feel like a drowned rat, and I stink of seaweed and salt. I want to get warm again, human again.

"Come on," Alice says, "It's not that late. You have time." And she starts showing me where everything is, how to operate the faucets, and about eight different kinds of bath beads, soaps and shampoo.

"I think you'll like this one – " Her pale hands open an amethyst-colored bottle. The fragrance is delicate and mysterious. "Mimosa," she says. I do like it.

Alice bustles around setting out the towels and the change of clothes, and suddenly the laundry basket is empty. "You can put your wet clothes in here," she says. "Just put it outside the door. I'll run them through the wash for you."

I'm shaking again, and don't know if it's from cold – which feels embedded in my bones even though the house is quite warm – or from the fall. Somewhere in the universe of all possible moments, Edward and I are still floating in the sea, still falling through the air. Somewhere, he's still calling my name. Alice puts her hands on me again. "Are you going to be okay?" she asks.

"I think so." It's a lie. I'm almost in tears, though I don't know why.

She squeezes my arms gently. "Holler for me if you need anything. I'll hear. This house has _great_ acoustics."

"Thanks, Alice."

And she's gone.

I do light the candles. I wash the sea off of me and out of my hair in the shower. I need something to hold onto, but there's only the water. I let the sound of it hide my gasping breath, the pelting spray rinse my face. The bath gel and shampoo feel like silk. The loofah cloth wakes up my skin, and even the muscles underneath. The room fills with steam, and mimosa scent.

The Cullens' bathtub is deep instead of long, and they have endless hot water. I sink in – all the way up to my neck – and finally I am able to rest. My bones return to the sea, as the outside green goes down to dusk. Nothing exists but stillness, and rain, and a trickling stream, and _tock, _and candlelight that flickers along the walls.

* * *

I hear my truck. I hear a garage door opening and then closing. I hear voices downstairs. The house comes to life with them; it fills up with the sounds. This is a busy household full of people. Something I've never experienced before.

I look at my hands. My fingers are all pruney. I miss both of my parents. We could have been a family, too, even if only a very small one. Our house is small and poor, but it would be cozy with three of us in it.

Time to get out of the water and get dressed. It's nearly dark outside already. The towels are thick and warm. The shelf where Alice had put them is a heater, I discover.

I've never seen underwear like the set that Alice has laid out for me. It's ivory-colored, finer and softer than anything I've ever worn: a smooth camisole, with matching underdrawers that come just past my knees, and pretty patterns embroidered, cream on cream, at every edge and hem. There's a full-length mirror set in a slight recess in the wall. I look at myself and feel like I'm going backward in time. There are warm, thigh high socks, and last in the basket is a plain, dark blue dress. Plain except that it's made of soft velvet. I pull it over my head and it goes almost to the floor, with a high scoop neck, long thin sleeves, and a satin ribbon under the bodice. It fits me perfectly and I wonder, who is this person in the mirror? I've never seen her before. Even with her hair towel-dried and stringy down her back, she's pretty. She looks like a girl, a lovely girl, a romantic girl. Someone a boy would want to know. Why is Alice dressing me like this? I think of virgin sacrifices.

The knock on the door nearly scares me out of my skin.

"Bella?" It's Alice. "Are you okay?" I've been up here so long; maybe she thinks I drowned in the bathtub.

"I'm okay. I'm dressed."

She comes in with a hairdryer and big-toothed comb in her hand.

I sit, and Alice works the warm dry air through my hair and down to my scalp. It feels good. She never pulls. We're mostly quiet, and I find my eyes closing again. I could fall asleep if I'm not careful.

Alice starts parting the hair at my temple in threes. "Rosalie never lets me do her hair," she confides. "And mine, well, there's not much you can do with it anyway."

"You can have my hair," I murmur. "To braid, I mean."

"Thank you, Bella." And this girl that I barely know hugs me tentatively. With her arms this time.

Her fingers are amazingly quick, and accurate, and soon my hair fits the dress, with silky soft plaits on each side, that end somehow in a chignon at the back. I'm ready for the staircase, with its mysterious cross, and the strange family down below.

Something is coming up the stairs. Aroma. My tongue appears between my lips. I'm famished. I can only imagine what they eat. Exotic food. Spices and textures and colors. But hopefully not endangered species.

"Esme made chicken soup." Alice leads me down by the hand. It smells delicious, and I'm glad it will be something I can handle.

There's noise coming from the great room, now. I glimpse, and hear, Emmett and Jasper whaling each other at a video game. Rosalie is there, too, and I can't tell if she is just cuddling against Emmett or waiting her turn. I can't make sense of it. This family of golden-eyed people with unknown powers, and they're playing – what is it? I don't even know. Something with guns and explosions. Jasper and Emmett wave to me. Rosalie does not. I don't see Edward.

I'm seized with sudden fear. "Where's Edward?"

"He's in his room," Alice says, as we reach the archway into the kitchen. Mrs. Cullen is there, and so is the doctor.

"Is he okay?"

"He's fine, Bella," Alice answers. "I promise. He's fine."

Doctor Cullen is approaching me. I can't help glancing at him. "Did they tell you what happened?" I ask.

"Yes."

"He … he was _under_ me. There were _rocks_." I know he was all right. I was clamped onto his back and there was no blood, nothing. Just like his arm was stronger than Tyler's van. And how could he have possibly climbed if he'd been hurt? But there's no reasoning with my fear.

"He's not hurt, Bella."

"You checked him?"

Dr. Cullen smiles. "I did. He's stronger than he looks."

Alice is, too.

They all are.

My heart is beating its way out of my chest by way of my throat. Alice has taken a half step away from me. Mrs. Cullen is at the other side of the kitchen island. She puts the soup bowl in her hands down on it, looking embarrassed, and takes a step back, too.

"You must be starving," she urges, gesturing to the soup. "I hope you like it."

I haven't eaten since lunch, and that one fact erases everything else as the soup smell wafts into me from the bowl and the stove. I go and sit on the high stool at the island and just eat.

Dr. Cullen smiles. "A good appetite. That's a good sign. I'd still like to check you over when you're done. Just to be sure. If that's all right with you, Bella."

He can check me over. My father trusts this man, so I do, too.

I'm sighing over the soup. It's rich and creamy, with dumplings, and meaty chunks of chicken.

Mrs. Cullen looks like she's blushing, though I can't see any color on her face. "It's Campbell's."

And that makes me feel better again. These people may be richer than makes any sense, even on a top surgeon's salary. They may have super powers I don't understand, but their mother can't cook.

"I should call my Dad."

"Of course." Dr. Cullen picks up the handset from the wall and dials. My Dad's voice comes over on speaker.

"Swan here."

I still have soup in my mouth, so Dr. Cullen carries the ball.

"Hi, Charlie, it's Carlisle."

"What's up, doc?"

I can't help blushing for my Dad, but Dr. Cullen laughs good-naturedly. "Just wanted to let you know that Bella's over here at the house with us."

"Is she okay?"

Parents must have disaster radar. Even mine.

"She's fine, Charlie. Alice has been wanting to invite her over for quite a while, now, and I guess today was the day. Hope you don't mind it was so spur of the moment?"

"Heck, no. They're kids, Carlisle. Even yours."

"True indeed. Would you like to speak to Bella?"

"Sure thing."

Dr. Cullen hands the phone to me. Every single word that he's said has been the God's own truth. And yet he has managed to cover over an entire near death experience in the time it took me to wipe my mouth. I know I have to play along … just like I protected Edward's journal. But it's making me nervous with Dr. and Mrs. Cullen standing right there and everything on speaker.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hey, kiddo. You having fun there?"

"Yeah, I – "

"Bet Esme's feeding you right now."

"Yeah, actually."

"Listen, Bells, you have a good time. I'll catch a bite at Bessie's and meet you back at the house after. Make it before nine, though; you've got school tomorrow."

"No, Dad, I'll be back for dinner." Well, a pretty late dinner at this point, but … "I – "

"It's okay, kid. I'm glad you're making friends."

And now I'm blushing for myself. But then, the Cullens are even more socially isolated than I am. Maybe they won't think I'm pathetic. Even though I'm pretty sure they're never going to tell me their secret. Just save me from a horrible death, and then send me back to my world.

"See you back before nine," my Dad adds. And then he hangs up.

Alice is nowhere to be seen. She must have slipped out of the kitchen when I wasn't looking. Mrs. Cullen presses me to have another bowl of soup. It's embarrassing. I'm the only one eating here.

"It's all right, Bella, we've all eaten already."

Where are the leftovers then? And why are they only serving me soup?

But they're fussing over me. Mrs. Cullen with her soup, and then Dr. Cullen with his stethoscope, and I don't want to be ungrateful or rude. They're kind. So kind.

Alice is back at my elbow, with a stack of schoolbooks in her arms. She looks at me a little shyly. "Do you want to do homework together?"

Mostly I just want to lie down. And Edward. I want Edward. I want to at least thank him. Actually, I would gladly combine the two and lie down next to Edward. I could tell him thank you, only thank you, and not even ask him any questions about how he did it. And he could put his arms around me again. And I would gladly fall asleep and never wake up. It's full night, now, and I wonder how long can I really stay here? Why did they bring me here anyway, instead of back to my Dad's house?

Because no one was home at my Dad's house. And our bathroom is small.

And maybe that's how I find myself warm and dry and fed and content, and not anywhere near as tired as I'd just thought I was, ensconced shoulder to shoulder with Alice on the fluffy rug in the middle of the great room, with our Trigonometry books in front of us. Emmett and Jasper have graduated from the video game to three-dimensional chess. Rosalie, still curled on the couch next to Emmett, has graduated to frowning hard in concentration as she works on a very complicated puzzle of iron rings and hooks and figure eights. I wonder that no one seems to have homework except for Alice and me. But Doctor Cullen and his wife don't seem concerned. They've drifted off to do whatever grown-ups do in the evening after the day has been settled.

The room is still and peaceful. Rosalie's puzzle makes soft clinks. Alice's and my pencils scratch on our papers. I feel her cool presence, just barely brushing against the fabric of my sleeve. Jasper and Emmett murmur to each other, "Check," and, "Au contraire, mon frère." There must be some kind of incense somewhere, or maybe it's the flowers in the gardens, because the house is filled with subtle lovely scent. Outside the windows, rain drips, and the sound captures me once more. This house is so beautiful it makes even the rain feel romantic.

I hear a new sound, and I realize that Edward has come into the room. I don't want to look at him. I'm afraid to look at him. What will happen if I look at him? I bury my face in Trigonometry, in this midnight blue dress, with my hair all done up pretty at the back of my neck. I hear him sit down at the piano.

And he begins to play.

I don't know the pieces by name, only that they are slow and gentle and classical and a little sad. Alice whispers to me the names of the composers: European Romantics – Chopin, Liszt, Debussy. He plays like the rain, like the trickling stream, like nature, with no effort at all.

I still don't dare to look, and only listen as he pauses, and then begins a new piece. It's different, and I know I've never heard it before. Ever. The notes are clear and tender and yearning. I can't do homework any more. Even his brothers and sisters have stopped breathing. The melody soars and dips, like a dark bird over water. It winds through my heart like an unfinished dream. I have to ask Alice, in the softest whisper I can make,

"Did he write this?"

"Yes."

It's so beautiful I think I'm going to die. I lay my head down on my outstretched arm, and just listen until it's done.

* * *

- _**Aversubtlegift**, you are simply the best. Thank you._

_Dear readers, I'm behind on replies. Promise to catch up, now that the chapter is written._

_P.S. This is what Bella heard in the Cullens' back garden: h t t p : / / www . youtube . com / watch?v=JrDr82aErOA&feature=related_


	48. Chupacabra

**Chupacabra**

"Shit!"

Rosalie throws her puzzle at the fireplace, where it crashes amongst the andirons with a horrendous clang, and storms up the stairs in a swirl of cold air. Two seconds later a door slams so hard and loud that I feel as if the whole house is shaken.

I can barely breathe, and my heart is hammering out of my chest. It's only by the grace of God that I haven't peed these pretty silk bloomers under Alice's velvet dress.

Her arms are already around me, holding me steady, and I realize I'm curled up almost in her lap.

"God, what – ?"

"Shhh, Bella. It's okay. It's okay."

It is completely not okay. Emmett and Jasper are sitting rigid on the couch, looking like they want to jump to the far side of the room. Their eyes are pitch black. Dr. and Mrs. Cullen have appeared out of nowhere, and Edward, Edward is standing at the piano, looking like someone just shoved a knife through his heart. A blunt one.

Everything shifts. I feel wrapped. Not just in Alice's arms, but in something. Something beautiful and warm and comforting. It's as if someone has taken my terrified, wildly beating heart and soothed it, gently, softly.

It's all right. Shhh, shhh. It's all right. No fear. No fear.

How do you describe something that speaks without any words at all? I'm surrounded by it, by this feeling.

Safe. Safe. No fear. No fear. My muscles say. My stomach says. My chest says.

"What did I do?" I ask.

I wasn't doing anything. But that's what I ask.

"No, Bella. No." Alice is holding me still, soothing me still.

Edward is sitting down on the piano bench again. I can't see his face behind the cover, which is raised like a black wing between us. His voice comes, disembodied and soft, answering me.

"She thinks we're all molesting you."

I don't understand.

He sighs. "We are."

Dr. Cullen kneels on the rug by Alice and me. "You've had quite a day, Bella. Perhaps it's time we got you home."

All the starch goes out of me at once.

"I'll take her," Edward says. Before anyone else can.

I imagine him picking me up and carrying me, putting me in his car. I wouldn't mind at all. But –

"My truck … "

Nobody looks too eager to drive it for me.

"I'm good. I can drive."

"Oh, Bella, no." Mrs. Cullen is kneeling now too, next to her husband, looking just like a worried mom. "Let Alice … or one of the boys – "

"It's okay. Edward can lead me." Lead me, Edward. Since I have no clue where I am or how to get home.

I see Alice having a seizure. It's only a small one, only for a second or two. Her face goes slack; her eyes stare at nothing. She forgets to breathe. She's still holding me.

Then she sighs. "It'll be okay."

Esme won't have it. "Carlisle – " She turns to me. "Bella, let Alice drive you. Or Emmett." Emmett's already driven the truck. He knows how to work the grumpy clutch.

Dr. Cullen has his wife's hand in his. I get the full force of his eyes. Gold is a soft metal, and so is his gaze. I wonder what his eyes have seen, what kinds of suffering, that has put such sadness in with the kindness there. "What do _you_ want, Bella?" he asks.

If I let someone drive me, then I won't be able to talk to Edward when we get to my house. I'll only be able to say goodbye to him there on the porch. When will I ever have a chance to talk to him again? Maybe Alice might tell me more, but it's Edward that I want to ask all my questions to.

"I can drive. As long as Edward leads me."

I see them all kind of glancing at each other. It's Dr. Cullen who speaks. "Alice, I'm sure Bella's clothes are dry by now."

I'm afraid to go upstairs, and so I end up changing in the mudroom between the garage and the laundry. Alice stands guard for me outside the door. She says I can keep her pretty clothes. But when would I ever wear them except in this house? And what do I have that I could ever give her in return?

"They don't really fit me, Bella. I got them at an estate sale. I knew they weren't quite the right size, but they were so pretty I just couldn't pass them up." She looks at me hopefully. "Do you believe in that? Getting something for a person or an event that you haven't even met yet?"

I don't even know how to answer that.

I'm led back out through the great room. Emmett is nowhere to be seen. Alice hands me off to Edward, who never actually touches me. Jasper magically melds to Alice's side, and Doctor and Mrs. Cullen are there, and I'm with Edward and it's like we've all paired up, two by two by two. As if this house is the ark, and the night is the sea. Even the rain plays along.

We're in the foyer, and Edward pulls an umbrella from a stand that I didn't even see. He's guiding me out, and I hope I at least said some kind of a thank you, but it's too late if I didn't, because now I really need to get my head together to drive.

* * *

Edward drives slowly in front of me. It's a good thing, because the night is pitch black and some places have fog as well as the rain. The windshield wipers on the truck aren't that great, either.

I keep his taillights in sight, and thank all the lucky stars I can't see that there aren't too many other cars on this road. When one comes, and inevitably passes me, Edward slows down even more, until they pass him, too, and then I can see him again.

We come into town from a direction I don't know, and even with the lights I am disoriented. Until we get onto the main street. And then my street. Will he stay, I wonder. Will he talk to me, before I go inside? Will he answer my questions? I start running through them. Which one is the most important?

What are you?

Edward.

What are you?

The house is completely dark, not even a porch light on. My cell phone is lost so I don't know what time it is. Is it really that late? Did I really stay that long at the Cullens'? Why didn't my Dad call if I wasn't home by nine like he'd told me to be?

I'm peering through the gloom as I come in the driveway. I can't see the cruiser in its usual spot.

I'm scared, and ready to burst out of the truck, and Edward is already there, opening the door for me, with the umbrella ready.

"Edward, what time is it?"

"Eight forty-seven."

I look carefully. There is no cruiser anywhere.

"My Dad's not home. He should be home by now …"

I don't want unexpected things right now. I need my Dad to be home, not somewhere I don't know where. I turn to Edward again.

"Can I … can I borrow your cell phone?"

"Of course." He sounds just like Dr. Cullen. Hands me the phone without letting our fingers touch.

I dial for my Dad's cell. Thank God I have the number memorized. It rings so many times I almost give up.

"Swan!" Short and loud his voice is.

"Dad!"

"Bella! Where are you?"

"I'm home. Where are _you_?"

I hear him curse under his breath. My Dad doesn't do that very often. "Bells, are you alone, there?" He didn't answer my question.

"No, Edward's with me."

"Carlisle's boy?"

"Yes. He led me back from their house; I was afraid I might get lost."

Edward is standing still as a stone next to me, keeping the rain off me with the umbrella.

"Listen, Bella, have Edward drive you straight to the station. Don't stop anywhere. Carlisle's coming to meet me here in the field. You two stay put 'til we get back, understand?"

I hear my blood whooshing in my ears.

"Dad, what happened?"

"Not now, baby girl. You and Edward just wait for us at the station. Don't let him go wandering off, hear?"

"Okay."

"Get going. Have the dispatcher hail me when you get there."

"Okay. Bye, Dad."

He's already hung up.

Edward speaks to me softly. "Get your backpack from the truck, Bella."

"You heard all that?"

"Yes."

He's like an old fashioned gentleman. For a moment I even picture him as a very old man, his shock of rust brown hair gone snow white, as he escorts me to his car, opens the door for me, puts my backpack in the back seat, helps me in. Never letting a drop of rain touch me. But _he_ never touches me either. How does he do that? And why? Why won't he touch me? It's not like we've never touched before. But those were only in emergencies. To save my life. He'll touch me to save my life, but not for any other reason.

Why?

Do I really stink? Do I have cooties? Is he really and truly gay after all?

It doesn't matter. I want him to touch me. I need him to touch me. I need, want him to hold me. I need to be held. By someone … anyone. But I want him most of all.

"Bella, put your seatbelt on."

I've been staring out the windshield like a zombie as he has pulled out onto the street. He's got the window open, more than just a crack, on his side. And the heat on full blast – for me, I guess. He doesn't make any sense at all.

From my Dad's house to the station is only about ten minutes' drive. I can't exactly interrogate him there. If I'm going to ask him any questions, now is my only chance.

What are you?

Why does everyone in your family have the same eyes?

Why are you all so cold? _All the time_.

How could Alice carry me?

Why do the Quileutes hate your family?

How did you do it? The van. And today.

What are you?

Why are you so pale?

The journal … what does it mean?

What are you?

What do you want from me?

_What are you?_

Did I ask all those questions out loud? I was sure I did. But Edward hasn't said a single word. I'm pretty sure he hasn't even breathed. His face is all tight, his jaw clenched. And now we are pulling up in front of the Forks Police Station.

He opens the door for me again, carries my backpack full of books. So unfailingly polite. Yet so natural and graceful about it too. As if he's always been this way.

"Come, Isabella." As he shelters and guards me through the doors, into the brightly lit station. Never touching me. Never.

* * *

Edward is not a happy camper. We are seated on a bench in the waiting area in front of the duty officer's counter. I am at one end. He is way, _way_ at the other end. Jiggling his leg non-stop. Sometimes he gets up and paces. Like he doesn't want to be anywhere near me. I try not to look at him. But it seems as if he's always in the corner of my eye. I can't relax with him like this.

Suddenly he is right in front of me.

"You need to eat, Bella."

"What? I'm fine."

"Nonsense. How can two little bowls of soup be enough for you? You need real food."

Where are we going to find real food in the police station? I'm pretty sure they have a vending machine in back, but I doubt that soda, candy or sticky buns count as real food.

"I'm going to the diner," he announces.

"What? No!" I'm already jumped up and grabbing him by the arms. He holds stock still, as if I'd caught him in freeze tag. His arms are cold under his jacket.

"You have to stay here. My Dad said." I'm hiss-whispering, afraid the adults in the station will notice we're arguing.

"Bella, it's just down the street." He keeps his voice low, too.

"No. My Dad _said_. You have to _stay_."

"Bella." He looks down at me with a funny expression. I don't know what it means, but it doesn't look unkind. "Tell me what you want."

I want him to stay, but that's not what he's asking. He wants to know my favorite food.

"The turkey dinner. With mashed potatoes and gravy, and Bessie's cranberry relish." What my Dad and I used to eat in July to celebrate Thanksgiving, because Mom and I never made it back to Forks in November. And he didn't really make it out to where we were either.

"What about a vegetable?"

This conscientious boy.

"Green beans."

"And to drink?" He's smiling now. It's the first time I've ever seen him smile. It's like the sun beaming down on the water.

"Hot tea. With milk and honey."

"Okay."

His voice is so, so soft. I'm sure that only I can hear.

He's going to pay for it all, too, I know. I might as well resign myself, but I make one last try.

"You don't have to do this." The meal is way more than I can finish by myself. Maybe he'll let me share it with him.

"I'll be back in no time. It'll be as if I never left."

I'm still clutching his arms through his jacket sleeves. He's shivering. Hard. I have to let him go. I hear him sigh in relief as he slips out through the door.

* * *

He does come back really quickly. I wonder if he called in the order on the way there. I don't care. I'm just glad he's back. I've been hearing things, snatches and snips, on the police scanner – all scratchy with static – and the duty officer and the dispatcher talking.

… _Chief's friend … thirty years … hard telling his family …_

… _half in the boat, half in the water …_

That would be the body, in two pieces … more or less …

… _dogs won't go near it …_

… _old Bert trawling the lake …_

… _blood's all washed away … Cullen … wounds … hairs … footprints_

… _state … forensics on the scene … animal control …_

"Bella."

Edward's using the bench beside me as a table, opening up the takeout containers. "Don't listen," he says. His face is drawn again. He's so pale, and his eyelids are dark. His eyes are pitch black again, too. My neck hair stands up, just like it did the first time I saw him like that, when he brushed past me at the school office, when we both went there trying to change out of Biology.

He finishes opening everything up for me and then steps back, all the way to the far corner of the waiting area, and gestures for me to eat.

"Don't you want some?"

"No, I … don't really care for turkey."

I look at the rest of what's here, wondering what I can offer him. This is diner food. I wonder how long it's been since he's ever eaten anything like this any more. Or maybe he _does_ eat like this, since his step-mom can't cook.

The station is pretty quiet, now, as the night wears on. It's scarier than when all the chatter was coming in. My Dad's still out there, where there is some kind of animal that can tear a grown man in half. I think of King Kong, or T- Rex. It's in our town.

I save half of the turkey dinner for my Dad. As if that's a magic charm that will bring him home safe. My hands are shaking as I close up the containers and stack them in the paper bag.

Edward notices, from way across the room.

"Bella, are you all right?"

"Yes. What time is it?"

"After ten." He doesn't tell me how much after.

"They're not back yet." It's as close as I can come to confessing how scared I'm feeling. In a very small voice.

Edward comes close to where I'm sitting. Very hesitantly, but he comes.

"Bella, they're fine. They're with lots of other men. They all have guns. Nothing is going to happen. It's an animal. They'll find it. They'll have to kill it. Then it will be over."

"Are they going to go tracking it tonight?"

"No, not in the dark. Tomorrow." He looks at me. "It's going to be all right, Bella. I promise."

I wonder what that means. I guess my Dad is pretty safe, if Dr. Cullen is with him …

Edward goes back to his corner. Slides down to sit there with his knees up. We're both sitting like that. Me on the bench, him in the corner. The two gargoyles of Forks.

He's got a piece of paper fished out of his pocket. It looks like the diner receipt. He's fiddling with it, folding and unfolding it in intricate ways. I think of the medicine recipe. The only gift of his that I still have left.

I watch his fingers as he plays with the paper – not hidden clenched up in a fist any more, but out where I can see them. His fingers are slender, graceful, and strong – just like I knew they must be. Making a plain little slip of paper into something complicated and delicate, then unmaking it and starting all over.

I see his hand, pushing in the side of Tyler's van.

I glance up at his face. I have never seen a face as beautiful as his. All pale planes and dark brows, eyes intent on the dance between his fingertips and the paper. His cheeks and his jaw and his mouth – just right, just right, just right to my eyes. How will I ever love any boy but him? This boy who will not touch me, except to save my life, who won't even sit next to me here on this bench.

Why?

He looks up.

"Why what?"

Shit.

"I don't understand you," I whisper. He can hear. I know he can.

The paper is nowhere to be seen. He's staring at me, his dark, feline eyes never wavering.

"What don't you understand?"

I can't ask him all my questions, not here, not now. But I can ask him the one thing that is more important than all of those, the thing that I have wanted to know for much longer than all of those.

"Do you hate me?"

He's up and walking toward me now. Slowly, carefully. Tiger, leopard, mountain lion grace.

"What are you talking about?"

"Why. You save my life, bring me medicine, bring me food, a journal … music … but it's like you can't even stand to be in the same room with me. Why? Do you hate me?"

He's crouched in front of where I'm sitting, all hunkered and hugging myself here on the bench.

"No," he says. "No."

And, "Bella."

In his soft, soft voice. His gaze isn't hard and staring any more, either. Does this mean we can be friends?

"Not even a heartless monster could hate you. Well, not for very long, anyway."

He's making me giggle with that. On purpose, I'm sure. Who knew that Edward Cullen had a sense of humor? I'm so glad he does, though. I want him to be happy. I don't want him to walk around forever with storm cloud eyes, and storm cloud heart.

He sighs. "Too much has happened to you today, Bella. You're dead on your feet. I'm getting you a blanket."

He's at the counter, calling to the officer. He commandeers _two_ blankets, actually, from the emergency lockers. He brings them both to me.

The bench is too short, so he puts my backpack up against the end of it to sort of support my ankles. He shrugs his jacket off and makes a pillow of it for my head. He tells me to lie down, and he'll wake me up when our fathers get here. He puts both blankets on me and then goes to sit in his corner in his shirtsleeves.

Only now do I notice that he is wearing a nice shirt. With a nice pair of slacks. And a belt. He put on nice clothes to come down and play the piano where I was.

Oh, Edward.

I hide my face in his jacket because I don't want him to see that my eyes are leaking. Some day I'm going to make him tell me all his secrets. No more lies. And maybe, some day, he will actually touch me when my life is _not_ in danger. But for now, I'll take the Chinese medicine and the turkey dinner, the beautiful music played in nice clothes, umbrellas and blankets and his jacket for a pillow.

I keep my face in his jacket because his scent is all over it. He turned the inside part out so it would be soft for my face. And it is. And it smells like him, like him, more beautiful than oxygen.

I don't sleep, but I do close my eyes, and time stands still with my face in Edward's jacket. When I look again, he's not in the corner. He's stationed himself against the wall at my feet, on the far side of my backpack, and the bag from the diner. His eyes are closed, too. I wonder what he is thinking. I would give anything to know.

Headlights flare through the glass doors. There's loud noise and bustle, and my father and his deputies and Dr. Cullen are all coming in from outside.

"Dad!"

I almost trip, all wound up in the blankets still, but Edward catches me, helps pull the heavy wool away, and then I'm on my father.

"Dad!"

"Bella! Bells. Easy girl. Easy."

He's embarrassed that I'm like this with him, in front of all the men, but he's got me in a tight grip, too. His sheriff jacket is soaked. My stomach almost turns, and then I see that it's just rain. Just rain.

My Dad looks at me. "I'm sorry Bells. I've still gotta file the initial report, phone calls to make ... gonna to be a long night. I'll set you up in the cot in my office. You can stay home from school tomorrow."

I feel like I'm surrounded by noise, heavy and clanking, boots, metal on metal, thick clothing being taken off, men's voices – everybody is taller than me. I hear lockers opening and closing in the back, see the rifles and shotguns as they are carried past.

I'm so tired I can hardly make sense of anything any more. Why doesn't my Dad let me go home with Edward and his father? I'm sure they have an extra room in their house. I could sleep over and go to school with them. I look around.

Edward and Dr. Cullen are gone.

* * *

_**A/N:** Well, it's two years to the day since I first began posting this story. o.O I never imagined then that I would still be writing it now. I want to give special thanks to geo3 for badgering me to post. I never NEVER would have except for her. Averysubtlegift, I seriously don't know how you've put up with all my writing angst, but I'm so grateful that you have. Quothme, you set me straight on tenses at the beginning, and that has made all the difference. Dear readers, many of you who have followed this wild ride all this time, wow! I'm bowled over by you every step of the way, and am grateful to call many of you friend. What an unexpected gift! To those who have pm turned off and I haven't been able to reply to your reviews - richierich, berylline33, farsidelady, iluvmeagoodstory, Maddy, Anonymous M.H., W__ait Until Dark, BnSA, and others from earlier chapters - please know that I treasure every word, as I do for everyone who has left thoughts here. May everyone be having a safe, healthy, and happy holiday season._


	49. Wolf Wind

_**Wolf Wind**_

_"_I look around. Edward and Dr. Cullen are gone."

~ l ~ l ~ l ~

* * *

_Down the wind we run. Following our enemy. Cold trail, cold feet, dead flesh walking. They run, too – after the scent of the trail. The wind is our voice, the rain is our tracks, among the standing ones. _

_Dead flesh walking. Sweet smell of decay that never comes. Like the white man's candy. We follow, wearing the night for pelt._

_Up mountain, down valley, far from our home. Enemy territory. We follow their war party at a distance, from downwind._

_The young one wears the scent of our daughter in his coat. He wraps himself in it, inhales her, pulls her in over his tongue and into his belly, holds her and drinks her endlessly as he runs. He is a burning branch in the dark, shooting hunger and rage and pain and desire, out to the four directions. _

_The trees hold grudge against him, and so do we._

_There is blood on this wind. Waterlogged and dirty. There at the lake, where the white men made fences of yellow tape. Here among the trees as we shadow the running dead._

_There are only two warriors among them. The yellow hair, with marks of the moon all over his skin. And the woman who pretends to be his twin, who died in blood and indignity. The rest are consumed by guilt, for hunting our daughter when they should have been guarding the Mother whose creatures feed them. The chief, and the small one, grieve most of all. But it is no use. These ghosts are like the other _ho-kwat_, the warm ones, __who only know invading and have never been invaded. They sleep with both eyes closed, even when they no longer sleep at all._

_Far from home this trail has run. Twisting and turning like a snake in high grass. To the edge of the land. To lights and water. The Others are waiting for them. Perhaps they saw the burning boy from far off, when they looked back over their shoulders._

_We will watch and we will see, how these devils fight among themselves: where is their strength and where is their weakness. The treaty stands, but the old man's pack has grown. Even if yellow kills red tonight, we do not trust. And so, tonight, we will watch and learn._

_There are three, these Others. The homeless ones. The hungry ones. W__aiting at the edge of the highway. _A mated pair, and the decoy, who pretends to be their head. Their stolen skins smell of dirt and rain and the prey they have devoured. Their hair – black of the lieutenant, red of the woman, yellow of her man – is long and matted. Their feet are bare.

_Our teeth. In silence, between the wind and the trees, we bare them, too._

_The outlanders wait to parlay, because to run invites chasing, and killing._

"_Greetings of the road, brothers, and sisters," the black-hair offers, both hands open before him. His face is dusky, not pale like his fellows. "Perhaps, though, we should get _**off**_ the road. People seem to travel at all hours this century."_

_They retreat into the cover of trees. We stay at a distance, behind our curtain of rain._

_The yellow-eyed chief speaks. "You have hunted within our borders."_

_We feel his warrior's _**influence.**_ Our tails droop without our permission. The interlopers, too, stand smaller, as though ashamed. We pay attention, for our grandfathers never met this scar-skinned one._

_"In truth, we did not know this land was occupied," the black-hair says._

"_It is. And you may see that we require a large range." Large range for a large tribe. The yellow-eyes seem to loom taller in the dark, and the trees seem to multiply their shadows. "The peninsula is ours."_

_The three stand closer together. Rain falls softly among the pine needles. Trees and ground and these ghosts and we, all are heavy with wet. _

_Red eyes glow at yellow. "Is it true what is said? Are you that one, who drinks only from beasts?"_

"_It is our custom."_

"_Then at least we have done no harm, taken nothing that you might have used." The decoy speaks these words, but they all are _**smelling**_ our warm girl on the cold boy's coat. They smell _**him**_, too. We all do. How he burns for her, thirsts for her. _

_The nomad yellow-hair and his red mate lick their lips._

_Our ears flatten. _

_The boy bursts with rage, and the moon-marked warrior shuts him away before any sign can show._

"_How we use our resources is our own concern," the chief says. "We claim our rights as any coven may. What guest goes rummaging through his host's pantry without so much as asking? Even the Guard did me the courtesy of dining beyond my borders when they visited."_

_Though we watch from afar, with every word we feel as if the earth is slipping out from under our feet. Our heads dip down, even tilt to expose our throats. The three wanderers grin appeasement, and look down and away._

"_A thousand pardons, Monsieur."_

_A string connects the heart of the warrior with the heart of the small woman. They feel each other along it, though they stand only loosely together, like all the others. We understand him now. He is their bow-stringer, their net-maker, their spell-caster. And she is his spider woman, plucking his heart string to warn._

_The red-haired woman speaks in a hurt child's voice. "You would not begrudge us the city, I hope?" She is thirsty. They all are. They have not yet drunk their fill. Her mate tastes the air around the boy. He is laughing inside, and we smell bad things in him, about the boy, and our daughter. _

_Thunder growls for us, and _**all**_ the cold ones startle. The warrior binds his little brother more tightly, and we remember the grandfathers' stories: _"The young one listens to what cannot be heard."_ He yells at the warrior, through his own heart string, his feelings unruly and wild._

"_We claim everything between the waters," the chief says. "Sea or straits on three sides. The highway called Route 8 is our border to the south."_

_Holding his brother, the warrior's grip on the strangers is loosened. The black-hair becomes bold again. "A fur-trapper's kingdom," he laughs._

_The chief's hackles rise. "It is best if you do not return."_

"_Oh, come, now. We began on poor terms, but there is no need to end so."_

"_You are leaving on foot, and not on the wind. Those are very good terms indeed, my friend."_

_The seven move, so that they stand almost in a line._

"_Leave off, Laurent," the yellow-hair says. "It's clear they don't mean to share. They've not even offered us a bath, or clothing, or even a seat by the fire. There's hunting east of here, and I've had enough of jabbering in the rain."_

"_We will see you to the border."_

_The red-hair links arms with her mate. "No, James, north. The city there is named after me. We're already wet, what does it matter if we swim?"_

_We watch from a distance, as they all go down to the shore, and the three strike out through the shallows. A long time the yellow-eyes watch, until the red-eyes are gone beyond their sight. _

_Owl calls, stopping first light at the edge of the world. __The seven run back the way that they came, swifter than the wind._

* * *

A/N: I owe such a debt of gratitude to my beta, _averysubtlegift_, and pre-readers _albymangroves_ and _saritadreaming_. Each of these wonderful women, wonderful writers, read through this chapter meticulously, each offered unique and much-needed perspective. And there was _handholding,_ since this chapter bucked me off and rewrote itself _completely_ in the wolves' voice, shoving the Cullens to the periphery.

* * *

The wolves in this story are a bit non-canon. Perhaps some day, somewhere, Bella may ask Jacob, _"What's it like?"_

_He looks away. "You're not yourself. It's nothing to want or wish for. I don't even know if we have real bodies or just shadows. Or maybe we're all just laying passed out in the lodge under a pile of wolf skins, dreaming."_

_"But I saw you," she whispers. "One of you carried Uncle Billy. And you all brought me back to Auntie Sue's house. Shadows can't do that."_

_"Maybe. Spirit warriors never stopped white people from taking our land, though. Maybe we only work against -" He doesn't want to be cruel, so he says, "zombies and stuff."_

_And then she is in his arms, sobbing._

"Ho-kwat" is Quileute for "(white) non-Indian". h t t p : / / www . quileutenation . org /

Thank you for reading.


	50. The Woods

**The Woods**

"Bells. Bells. Wake up."

Oh my God, did I oversleep? How … I open my eyes, not to my room, but to my Dad's office at the station. And the whole day of yesterday comes rushing back to me. I feel like I've been hit by a train.

"I got some breakfast for you."

"You pulled an all-nighter?"

He shakes his head. "Got a fancy swivel chair." I see the blanket still crumpled over it.

My father's face is grey. I notice he only has one plate of food here, for me. Probably got it from the diner. Where Uncle Waylon always used to hang out, and always said "hi" to us whenever we'd eat there. All I will ever know or remember about this man is that he always needed a shave, and his breath smelled like whiskey. I get up and hug my Dad, still in my clothes from yesterday. The ones that Alice washed.

"It's okay, kid. It's okay." It's not. I know that. But he's not going to talk to me about it. I know that, too.

I see the clock on the wall. School started an hour ago. Dad kept his promise to let me play hooky after being up so late last night.

"I'm gonna be in and out all day, Bells. You can stay here and read or something. We got a television in the back, too."

"Dad, no. I can't – "

His face is all tense and set. He doesn't want me home all by myself.

"Let me go to school. It's okay."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"I'll come get you …" He's not sure when he can do it, how long I'll have to wait for him after the last bell.

"It's okay. I'll be in the library."

Everyone is talking about it at school. I don't want to listen, but nobody is talking about anything else. All of the things about yesterday that I _want_ to remember – the Cullens' house, Alice's dress, the warm and cozy fire, Edward's music, him holding me in the cold, cold sea – I can't. It's all drowned out by the buzz of this awful death.

Deaths.

I feel Edward's eyes staring at me in Biology. Now I hate my seat. Hate that I can't look at him or see him without turning all the way around. I want to sit next to him. I wonder if he'll ever relent about that? But the semester is half over. What chance do I have?

Days pass. My Dad stays paranoid. I'm not allowed to be anywhere alone. And nowhere _ever_ near the woods. He waits at home to see me off to school, and I have to be either at the school or the town library or the police station until he gets off from work. We shop together now.

I sleep in my bed. Leave the rocking chair for Edward. I don't know for sure if he comes or not. I can never catch him. But I always leave one of my quilts on the chair for him so he won't be cold. Maybe he never comes. The quilts only ever smell like me now. But I swear I smell his fragrance on the chair rungs. Maybe he just never uses the quilt. Maybe he puts it on me when he's there.

At school we still pretend to be strangers.

I don't dream at all.

* * *

Another day. Another last bell. I'm at my locker. Edward Cullen walks right by me. He stares at me as he passes. Same way he's _been_ staring at me, all this time. Jessica was right. He can't take his eyes from me. I can't take mine from him, either. He's had all the advantage, staring at me from behind in our class. Only now do I get to look at him in return. Our eyes hold each other in unbreakable embrace.

The moment passes, as he does too, down the hall. I'm not going to just stand here. Not any more. I leave all my stuff in my locker and I follow him out. I'm not supposed to do this. My Dad will panic if I'm not here when he comes for me. But it's almost April. The days are longer than the nights now. Even with clouds, daylight saving time makes it light out until almost eight o'clock. I've got time. Time to follow him. Time for answers.

I follow Edward out the doors, across the parking lot, and into the waiting woods.

* * *

I know this path. I walked it before.

_In the future, try not to get yourself soaked and chilled on the same day that you decide to skip lunch._

He's stopped in front of the tree. The very same one. He _did_ follow me that day. When I got soaked and chilled, and he brought me medicine the next morning. I'm standing beside a ledge of rock a few paces behind him, and I feel the world and my life and these days all moving in circles. Everything is wet. It's not quite raining. But the mist is drifting through in curtains, heavy enough that the trees are dripping. The tall, straight trees all around us. The green and the black. The voices of the school are very far away, and the sound of the mist fills the almost silence. A bird cries.

"What are you _doing_, Bella?"

"You told me to follow you." Without words, but that's stronger, isn't it?

"I suppose if I told you to jump off a cliff, you'd do that, too?"

I roll my eyes, but he can't see, because he's still facing the tree, not me.

"What do you want from me?" he asks. His voice is soft. Sad. Afraid.

_'What do you want from me?'_ That's _**my**_ question. _**He's**_ the one who has been stalking _**me**_. Whenever I'm in danger. Or asleep.

"I want the truth. That's all I've ever wanted. All I ever asked."

"It isn't pretty."

_Not everything that's pretty is good._

"I'll take my chances."

"You don't know what you're saying."

"Then _tell_ me, Edward. Just tell me."

He doesn't answer for a long time. The tree stands in front of both of us, reaching all the way up to the sky. Fresh pine and spruce and fir smells are all around, like sacred incense.

"I'm a vampire."

I stare at his back with owl eyes. I've guessed a million things but never this.

The bird cries again, and I feel as if the real world has gapped open, like melting celluloid, and left me standing here in the dreamtime. Except it's the dreamtime that has been real all along.

The half-eaten bodies mean something completely different now.

Not a bear. Not a mountain lion. Not wolves. Not even the chupacabra.

_Edward. _

And his family.

I think of them, each so beautiful. Like jaguars and tigers, red-tailed hawk and snowy owl. I'd seen a baby rabbit once, killed by a hawk, its body splayed open, the fur in tufts on the ground. They live in their beautiful house, go to school, work in the hospital. They have perfect camouflage. To live among their prey, and strike at will.

But their kindness - how am I supposed to make sense of that? Dr. Cullen saving lives. Mrs. Cullen's blush without color. Emmett winking. Alice's arm brushing mine as we did homework side by side on the rug. Edward's … everything. This family, and their strangeness, is a knot that I don't know how to unravel.

Finally the boy in front of me turns. I just look at him. He's still Edward to me. Though his face is in shadow.

"Don't you understand?" he cries. He makes claws of his hands, and puts on a false Transylvania accent: "I want to suck your blood!" And his golden cat eyes burn so intensely that what he said isn't funny at all. His hands drop, and his face falls. "_Really._" Barely a whisper now, "More than you can possibly imagine."

"I don't care."

"Are you crazy?"

"No."

"Bella, you're not _safe_ with me. You can _never_ be safe with me. _Not ever_." The words, and his voice, hurt.

"Without you I'd be dead already, Edward. Twice over. Maybe more." I can feel my own heartbeat as I think of myself like the girl in the snow. Splayed open. Strewn. "I'll take my chances."

He approaches me slowly, and I stand my ground. God only knows what's going on in his mind. These may be my last moments on earth. The drumming in my chest is much too loud, and much, much too fast. I remember my dream. The first one. This is what it meant. He is my mountain lion. I am his doe. Not enemies. Lovers. Ready to become one flesh. I won't struggle. Though my heart is hammering, now. Haven't I always wanted him to hold me? Didn't I say I would give my life? It will only hurt for a little while. And then my blood will live forever, in him.

Suddenly, he is crouched in front of me, offering me his back. I never even saw him turn.

"Get on."

We are back in the sea again. He is telling me to climb onto his back. But this is not then. Then he was taking me back to land. Now he is going to take me away from everything I know. Something in me lets go. I climb onto his back, and wrap my arms around him. My face is in his hair, at the back of his neck. It is as cool as the air around us – silky, and fragrant, and fine. His flesh is unnaturally firm, and as cold as I remember – like the rocks beneath the ocean. Like the tree that stands above us. My face has burrowed down against his neck until my nose and lips are touching his skin. So smooth. His scent surrounds me. He smells like clean, clean skin; like hints of the forest; like frankincense and myrrh –yes, I finally found the scent that is like him – but most of all, he smells like my heart's desire.

And I. What do I smell like? Compared to him, I must smell like old mutton.

"Edward?"

"I'm here, Bella." He has hooked his arms under my knees, drawing my legs tightly around his waist.

"Do I smell bad to you?"

"No." He stands. "Hold on."

I do. And in an instant, we are running, no, _flying_ through the forest.

Edward defies the laws of physics. Clinging to his back, I do, too. I can't tell if he is taking seven league strides, or just pumping his legs really, really fast. The trees are nothing but a dark blur, the spaces between them making an eerie flicker of pearly light. We are crossing the lines of light and dark. The air rushes past us, sharp as a knife, and from time to time I hear terrifying cracks. It takes me a while to realize that these are tree branches, maybe even tree TRUNKS, that Edward is breaking with one hand, clearing a path for the fragile thing he is carrying on his back.

CRACK!

CRACK, CRACK!

"Edward, stop! Please stop!"

He hears me, and does slow down, then comes to a stop. I feel him take a small breath to speak, and in that instant realize that all through the super-speed run, he hadn't breathed at all.

"What's wrong, Bella?"

"You're breaking the trees. I don't want to break the trees."

"Oh, Bella!" And he laughs. It uses up the rest of his breath, but it's a real laugh – the first time I've _ever_ heard him laugh – and the sound is so sweet.

"They grow back, you know." It comes out as a gasp.

"I know that, but it takes a long time, and you're hurting them."

He lets me down off of his back, and stands a few paces away. So he can breathe enough to talk normally. I don't care what he says; my smell _does_ bother him. Badly.

"You think the trees have _feelings_?" His face is incredulous.

"Of course they do." The trees all around us are standing in witness. "Look around you." All by themselves, my arms have stretched outward, so that I look like a tree, too. I turn slowly, in the dark, green cathedral, with the dead lying down and the living stretching up. "Feel their soul." I feel it, and I have to kneel. Right there between the slick, wet rock on my right, and the ancient log on my left - all gone to rot, and moss, and ferns, and a long row of saplings, slender and strong.

Edward is crouched down, too, there on his side of the little space that was made by the giant's fall. He's looking at me like he thinks I've gone insane.

"You think _plants_ have _souls_?"

"Yes." And I'm speaking with the breath of them all, the tall and the small, singing through my veins. "Listen."

He does listen. And I learn that there is nothing more silent than a vampire holding still. The drops of the mist patter down through the pine needles. They're loud compared to him. In the stillness, a spotted beetle crawls up the stem of an Indian paintbrush. From another valley, a raven croaks.

Edward shakes his head, grimacing, and looks at me with intent and intense curiosity.

"How do you eat, then," he asks, "if you think that even plants have souls? You can't even be a vegetarian."

"Everything that lives has to eat another living thing, Edward. Except … except the plants. They _make_ life … from light and air and water and earth."

I don't know where these words are coming from. I've never said them before. Never even _thought_ them before. And yet … "Maybe that's where soul _began_ … brought into the world by the plants." My hands are still resting, one on the rock, and one on the log. "They're the grandfathers," I whisper.

A long wind sighs through the treetops, releasing a shower of tiny, cold drops on us both.

"But you _eat_ them. Your … 'grandfathers' …"

"It's life. We're connected."

Edward crumples in front of me. His face is in his hands, and he doubles over until his forehead touches the earth. His shoulders are shaking and he is making choked sobbing sounds that just tear at my heart.

I don't understand why he is crying. Is it because he wants to eat me? Doesn't he know that in this place that isn't a sin? Can't he feel the branches above and the roots below, holding us in a perfect circle? Or is it because he can't belong to that circle? Because he can't die?

I want to help, but I don't know how. My hand doesn't care, and reaches out to touch his hair. His hair really is beautiful. It's like a bronze flame against the dark colors all around us.

The shower of drops comes down harder, and I realize that the mist has turned into rain. Whatever spell had bound us is getting washed away now, by the simple ordinariness of rain.

Edward looks up. His face is hurt, but tearless.

"We can't stay here, Bella. You'll catch your death. And we have a long way to go."

He offers me his back again.

"Get on," he says. So softly, this time. "I'll try not to break anything along the way."

* * *

Nearly there.

Bella thinks that trees have souls._ I wonder what she thinks of me? Now that she knows._

Nearly there. What seemed like a passage through misty forest, has in fact been an ascent through cloud. Now, though the forest is still thick around us, the clouds are behind us. Below us. In deference to Bella's wish, I have run the remainder of this journey slowly, weaving my way between the trees so as not to harm them. But not too slowly. I glance at the sky. Yes. I have succeeded. The place to which I am taking her will still be hospitable.

But something is wrong. Bella's arms and legs are clamped tightly around me, more so even than when I had run at full speed. Her breathing is shallow and rapid, and her heart beats like a trip-hammer between my shoulder blades.

Has she finally, FINALLY realized how insanely dangerous it was to follow me into the woods? To let me carry her off like this? Is she regretting, at last, her foolhardiness?

I slow to a stop, and put her down. I want to move a safe distance away. So long as I was running, it was as if I was running out from under her, running away from her scent, away from the venom that flooded my mouth, the overpowering urge to just sink my teeth into every pulse point on her body. And suck and rip and pull …

_Oh dear God don't let me hurt her._

But now that we are stopped, I _have_ to step away.

And she won't let me.

She's still holding onto me.

It makes no sense. If she has finally realized the danger I am to her, shouldn't she let go? Shouldn't she run away screaming?

"Bella, what's wrong?"

I feel her looking up, to the left and to the right.

"Bella!" _Let me go. Before I …_

"The sun is out."

"What?"

Suddenly, she moves, remarkably quickly for a human. In an instant, she is standing on top of a large fallen trunk beside me.

_Oh, Bella, if you fall … if you even skin your knee …._

But she is standing there, holding her jacket spread open to her sides, looking _(ah, forgive me)_ like a human-sized flying squirrel.

"Bella, what are you _doing?_"

"I'm making shade for you."

With her jacket open like that, every breath that she takes, every beat of her heart, sends waves of her beautiful scent washing over me. The sweet thrum of her blood, making my jaw just ache with anticipation. And the delicate native fragrance of her skin and flesh. Mimosa. The bashful leaf.

I struggle to keep my mind on her words.

_Shade? Good grief!_

"Bella. It's a myth. Sunlight doesn't hurt us."

Her brow furrows. But she keeps her jacket open. She _is_ blocking the sun from hitting me. She has chosen the spot exactly right.

"Are you sure?" she asks, with a dubious little frown.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Have you ever gone out in the sun before?"

I can't help but laugh. I hope she doesn't think I'm laughing at her.

"Lots of times," I say.

"Then how come you and your brothers and sisters are never at school when it's sunny out?"

How does she know this? I don't care. I have to get her to close her jacket. And get down off of her perch. Safely.

"Bella, come down."

I reach my hands toward her. Yes. I put them on her waist. I lift her down. Carefully. Safely. Out of the stray bars of sunlight that fall through the trees.

I take a step away from her. Even though my hands want to stay on her waist. Everything about her is soft. Everything about her is warm. Everything about her is everything that I want. In every horrible way.

But her jacket is now hanging normally about her body, covering her just enough. Just as the shade of the forest covers me, just enough. I hold out one hand to her.

"I'll show you."

She takes my hand without flinching, but her brow remains furrowed, doubtful.

"I'm not going to immolate myself in front of you, Bella."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

Her hand is warm in my dead-cold one. I am not coarsely made, oh, but her fingers are so slender in my grasp.

I lead her through the stands of trees, a winding path avoiding the patches of sunlight. How shameless I am, building up the suspense like this. But I can't help it. I want so desperately to not be what I am.

I stop short at the edge of the little meadow. It is hardly at its best. Going up a mountain is like going backward in time. While the lowlands are already starting to bloom with spring, this altitude is still locked in the dregs of winter. The grass lies dead and flattened. The ghosts of its summer flowers exist only in my memory. But the sun has been on it all day. It is dry, and almost warm. And the view, upwards, and outwards …

Bella is gripping my hand tightly, here in the shadow of the last rank of trees. She is staring at my meadow with a strange expression on her face.

"You found this?" she asks, her voice a hushed whisper.

"Yes."

Her fingers twine softly, tightly, with mine, trembling ever so slightly. Minutes pass, like the red and black beetle climbing up the wax-white stem.

"It's … your _place_," she says at last.

Something leaps in my chest. She knows. She understands. Perhaps she has kept such a place herself – a haven for her solitude. But solitude is not the true purpose. Solitude is in waiting. And now I want to clasp her about the waist and twirl her around me, and carry her to the center of this patch of sleeping grass, and watch together for an entire year as every color of sun and wind and rain passes across it, and the flowers bloom in their day, and the woods change their deep hues of green and brown and black, and the stars wheel above, and the mists rise below, until winter sets forth every dark branch with a white edge of snow. She cannot, of course, but I would. I could. Sit like a statue, as still as a stone. At rest, at last, from the frenzies of hunger and thirst. To just be.

With her.

With her, I would.

A new scent assaults me. Like her blood, but purer. I look at her and see that her eyes have filled with tears.

_Why?_ What have I said? What have I done? It doesn't matter. All I know is that I want to take away those tears. One has overflowed, and made a trail to her cheek. In my mind's eye I see myself approach her, bend to kiss that one trembling drop, suddenly bright with a glancing flash of sun. What would it be like to be so close, to have her full scent flood into me point blank? How warm would her cheek be? How soft? Would she blush? Would her skin suffuse with that ravishing red …? I can almost feel myself daring to place my mouth upon her, my eyes closing, lips parting, tongue venturing forward to _taste_ that tear … but it's not enough. Right there, her blood! Right there my teeth! Right there her flesh! Parting, opening! A hot waterfall of crimson heaven, down her ruined face –

_NO!_


	51. The Meadow

_For fifty chapters they have sung their lonely arias. This is their duet._

* * *

**The Meadow**

He's gone. Gone.

He had been standing so close. Holding my hand. Leaning in.

I'd thought … I'd thought he was going to kiss me.

Then _whoosh_, all the air sucked out of the space where he had been standing. My fingers wrenched.

I stand where I am, listening. It's unnaturally quiet. In the stillness, I realize that this is how it is around him. No animal or bird makes a sound anywhere close by. Only far away.

My hand is hurt. Not broken or anything like that, but it hurts where he wrenched away, too fast to be seen. I hold it in my other hand and bring it to my chest.

Without Edward, I look around me, at the shaded spaces between the trees, and the bright circle of flat, dead grass beyond.

"Edward!"

My small voice cries in the wilderness.

"Edward!"

Come back.

Come back.

How many times has he done this, now? Come close and then disappear.

A bag of medicine on my Dad's porch. But no hide nor hair of him.

In his arms on the ground, held safe from screaming metal and flying glass. And then he skips out, before anyone else can see.

His scent in my bed, and the journal. Was it his? Or someone he killed? Oh, God, was that boy, that beautiful Edward, the first person he ever killed? I can't, I _can't_. He left it there – his scent and the book – with no explanation.

Holding me in the ocean, carrying me back up to dry land, and then bolting away like a startled animal.

Then coming down the curving stairs, to play the piano, in his Sunday best.

Close and away, close and away. Keeping me dry with his umbrella. Leaving to get me food. Returning to feed me. Sitting way over in the corner. Coming to settle at the foot of the bench.

Bringing me here. And now gone. Again.

It's a dance.

Like the waltz from Sleeping Beauty.

_I know you_

_I walked with you once upon a dream._

I know this song by heart. Watched it so many times on the VCR when my Mom was at work, and I had to be good at home.

_I know you_

_The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam._

Aurora and her Prince, separating and coming together.

_Yes, I know it's true_

_that visions are seldom all they seem – _

Around and around. Pink and then blue.

_But if I know you, I know what you'll do_

_You'll love me at once_

_the way you did once, upon a dream …_

The stories – on the news and at school – drizzle and yellow tape, my father's grey face, Brendan talking about thigh bones cracked open and the red marrow sucked out, as if he'd been there, which he hadn't. Out here in the middle of nowhere with a _vampire_ – real and solid and faster than thought, and lurking somewhere I can't see – I should be scared out of my mind. I should be running with all my life, like the deer, or frozen motionless, like the rabbit in the shadow of the hawk. But I can't. Because all of the bloodless, torn apart bodies are what is told by others. But what I've _seen_ and _heard_ and _felt_, with my own eyes and my own ears and my own self, is a completely different world. Doctor Cullen with his careful hands. Mimosa soap and chicken soup. Alice softly braiding my hair, and Edward, always Edward: sheltering me with his body, holding me up in the water, "Are you okay? Are you okay?"

And so, I am not running.

I am taking off my shoes and my socks, and walking out into the meadow.

Even in the sunlight, the grass is cold, like him. It's stiff and dead and just slightly damp. The cool travels up through my legs, even though I'm wearing jeans.

I walk gently, carefully. I know all about _places_. And I just _know_, that this is where he comes when he needs to be alone. Where he comes to find himself. My own are left all over. White Swan. Salt Lake. Santa Cruz. Phoenix.

"Edward," I call, as I walk to the center of his heart.

Here I am.

And I stretch out my arms, and I look up to the sky, and I turn and I turn.

Movement, a flash, catches my eye, and he scares me out of my skin. The sound I make is like a startled animal – hands clapped over my mouth, heart nearly escaping from my chest.

He _lied_ to me! He's _burning_, right here in front of my eyes!

But that's not what it is.

I step closer, to see.

"Look at you." Words on breath, and nothing else. My hand goes out, pulled by his light. "Look at you."

He does look at himself, and his face is ashamed, afraid, as the sun stands bright in the blue, shattering all over his skin.

I reach for him. "You have rainbows."

I want to touch.

"Halos."

He lets me.

"Everywhere."

I hold his hand in one of mine; run my other hand's fingers over his forearm.

The way the light scintillates off of him, I expect his skin to feel all faceted, like diamonds. But of course he's not. He's all smooth and coolness, but too hard, too solid, too dense to be any kind of human flesh. More like some living stone. The stone child in his rainbow cloth. I have found him.

_I can't believe this girl. She touches me fearlessly. Even though she knows what I am, can **see** how unnatural I am. Only her heart betrays her, racing beneath her breast._

_She turns my hand over and lets out a soft cry. "Even your palm!" Her warm fingertips trace and tickle. "Even your palm."_

He's staring at me so hard. Shivering in my hands. "Is this all right?" I ask.

"Not really," he whispers, tremoring throughout his body. But when my hands loosen he grips me instead. "Don't," he says. "Don't let go."

"I won't." I would never.

We stand quietly, and slowly he settles. Until he is completely, utterly still. The inside of his wrist is under my fingers, and I feel the silence there. A wisp of cloud is passing in front of the sun, and his skin quiets, too, back to its milky white.

He's still staring at me as I raise my hand to his chest, slip it in past his open jacket, to where there's nothing but his thin shirt between me and his skin. I can't find it. I must be putting my hand in the wrong place. I search for my own with my other hand. I can feel, beneath my ribs, but maybe that's only because it's beating so hard.

Will he let me? I take the half step in; it is my face that slips in where his jacket hangs open. He's holding his breath again, because I smell bad, or perhaps to let me hear. Holding onto his waist, my ear against his chest, I listen. A minute. Two. At last he sighs.

"There's nothing there, Bella – nothing that moves, anyway. I'm a walking corpse." He snorts softly. "Perfectly preserved in the moment of death."

I see the last words on the page, the horribly _large_ brown stain. It's him. It's _him_. He didn't kill. He died.

"You're Edward!"

He laughs, actually laughs. "Yes, that's my name."

"No. The journal. It's you. It's you."

Now it's me that's shaking, talking into his cold, still chest. "I thought you were dead. Forever. Bones in a box. But no box, because they ran out, didn't they? Just wrapped in a cloth and buried, all disintegrated by now, gone back to the earth. And I would never see your face, never hear your voice, never anything!"

_She's clinging to me, burning me with thirst – for the heat of her, for her tears that scald through my shirt to my skin, for the blood that I hear and smell, rushing through every vessel in her body. What more proof does anyone need that that boy is no more?_

_I'm shaking again, and she lets me go. **She's getting away!** It takes everything I have not to clutch her back to me and bite. She's not getting away at all, not even trying. She's wiping her face on her sleeve and looking up at me._

"_Doctor … Doctor Collin …"_

_I nod. "It was Carlisle. They didn't have name tags in those days. I just wrote what I thought I heard."_

"_He saved you."_

"_In a manner of speaking."_

His face is bitter when he says it. What has it been like for him? This boy who wrote about his last snow man, who cranked the heavy laundry through the wringer for his mother, who made a pact with his friend to find each other in the trenches in France; instead he's doomed to live forever, drinking blood like some kind of monster.

"Do you wish that he hadn't?"

He's staring at me again, and his face goes soft. The sun is out again, too, and his hand and his face and every part of his skin that I can see all dazzle with rainbow fire as he brushes my cheek with his thumb.

"Not any more."

Not any more.

I had been made of lead, but now I'm made of air. I don't know how to dance but I am spinning away, arms out, turning and turning, looking up at the sky. I used to play this all by myself when we had a little bit of lawn, in the first house, in White Swan.

"Isabella, what are you doing?" His voice is alarmed.

"I'm spinning." I flop down in the grass, arms out, face up. "It makes heaven and earth turn around and around. Didn't you ever do this when you were a kid?"

"I don't remember."

That whispered answer breaks my heart.

"Try."

_She gets up and pulls at my hand, and starts spinning around – unsteadily, now, because she is already slightly dizzy. I turn, too, keeping a watchful eye on her. She **is** clumsy, after all. I worry about hidden stones or sharp tree-roots under the grass, under her bare feet. She topples suddenly and I twist to guard her landing, then lie down, too. Our heads are close to each other, but our bodies and feet stretch out in opposite directions. Bella stretches her arms out to the side and I do the same. We lie on our backs like twin crosses, anti-parallel, heads together, gazing up at the same sky._

"_Did they move for you, too?" she asks._

"_Yes." But not for the same reason that they did for her. It is she, not a trivial bit of spinning, that has moved heaven and earth for me, made my world new._

_We gaze upwards together, silently. I have never felt so close to another being before. In the silence of her mind, the soft susurration of her breath, the beat of her heart, the clouds that pass above – or is it below? – our eyes. We are together._

_From the corner of my eye I see and feel her turn her face toward me again, and I do the same._

"_You're upside down, Edward."_

"_Well, so are you, Miss Swan."_

_I have never been so happy as I am right now. This is the summer that was denied me. Lying in a sun-warmed field with a young lady, bantering gently like this. Even if it is only the lamb's tail of March._

_Isabella turns on her side and I mirror her, and now, if some bird were to look down on us, what would it see? Our two bodies making something like the S-curve that divides yin from yang in the circle of the Tao?_

"_Being upside down will turn your frown into a smile," she says._

_I smile, and hope that doesn't mean that in fact I am frowning._

_Bella closes her eyes and sighs. "I'm so happy."_

"_You are?" Yes, I am greedy. I want to hear her say this to me._

"_Yes. Today is the beautiful day of my whole life."_

What did I say? His smile has turned on a dime.

"Today could be the _last_ day of your whole life, Bella. It will always be that way. Ever since I first smelled your blood."

I want him to laugh again, like he did before, this Edward, this beautiful Edward, who didn't die, but lived. "I don't stink?"

"No." He smiles sadly. "That was a lie. You smell _good_ to me, Bella. _Too_ good. Much, _much_ too good. That's why – " He stops. I see him swallow, _hard_, close his eyes, and hold very, very still. "It's better not to talk about it, actually."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. It's never been your fault."

"It's not your fault either, Edward."

He can't look at me, only at the sky. "Every moment that you are with me may be your last."

He swallows again, and squeezes his eyes shut. "I'm so sorry."

I look at him. All this time, I've been making his mouth water. I feel a chill, but I'm going to say what's in my heart.

"It's supposed to be that way, Edward. We're supposed to live each moment as if it might be our last." I take a breath. "You make that real for me."

He looks at me dumbfounded.

I feel sad. "But I can't make that real for you, can I?"

"No, Bella, you do."

"I do?"

"Yes, you do."

My heart dips and soars, like the dark bird, like the music he wrote. Edward turns on his back again, and looks up at the sky. As if he is searching for an answer there. I wonder what the question is.

"My family and I," he begins. I wait. A breeze flows over us, reminding me that it isn't April yet, and we are up in the mountains, even if we are under the sun. He shakes his head. "I shouldn't tell you this. You'll think you're safe with me and you're not. You'll never be."

"Edward. I believe you. Lying down with you … is like lying down with a tiger."

I wonder if he can hear my heart speeding up again. I wonder if he can smell what emotion I'm feeling. Maybe someday he'll tell me what it is – since I'm not even sure myself. If it's fear … or surrender.

"I know that you kill. But so do I, remember? Everything that lives has to eat another living thing."

"Except the trees?" he asks, teasing ever so gently.

And I know. It's surrender. Unconditional.

"Grass too; don't forget the grass." I'm fishing for his smile – the happy one – that I've only seen in tiny glimpses.

"Oh, Bella."

The thought of dying in his arms fills me with a strange trembling. But thinking of someone _else_, someone who wants to live, not die, someone _struggling_, _**scared**_, having their life _**taken**_ by horrible force –

He takes a deep breath, and it looks like it hurts going down.

"My family and I, we drink from animals."

"_Animals?"_ He's thrown me completely for a loop. Again.

"Carlisle taught us. He's the best of us. No, Rosalie is. She's the only one among us who's never tasted human blood." He smiles a little. "She's too stubborn and proud." He rushes to make sure I didn't miss the main point. "It doesn't mean that we're safe for you, Bella. There have been slips." He puts both hands over his face. "Some of us more than others."

I'm still trying to catch up. "So, wait, those people who were eaten … it really was a _bear_?"

He looks at me. "We took care of that."

"Your family."

"Yes."

Wow. "Did you … you all _drank_ the bear?"

"Not … not this time. But yes, we do. And Emmett – " He cracks a small smile. "Emmett's rather partial to bear."

I try to wrap my mind around it. I guess it explains the camping trips. And I guess it's easier, and less traceable, than trying to tap into blood banks or something. If one felt bad about killing.

"But you all really prefer human blood."

"Yes." His eyes bore into me. "Always."

The sun is throwing halos over him again, and I understand where the myth of burning comes from.

"Living the way we do, _mingling,_ it's like being an alcoholic at a winery on tasting day – all the casks open and breathing." He puts his hands over his face again. "It's worse, actually. It's like heroin addiction. Like crack. Like meth. Like ecstasy." I hear him swallow quietly. "It never ends, either."

My heart is breaking all over again. "Why, then? Why do you live among us?"

"Because, _not_ to, _forever_, is too lonely. Too purposeless." His hands are at his sides and he's staring up into the blue again. "It's too lonely. Even with seven of us."

"I'll be your friend, Edward. I'll always be your friend."

_Who made this girl? Where did she come from? And how did she ever come to Forks? _

I look at him and wonder what he's thinking. I'm so glad that he and his family don't drink people, though I know they'll always want to. I like to think that I could love him anyway; I'm pretty sure that I could, that I _do_. But right now I'm thanking God and all the angels, that I can love him without having to harden my heart against all those people he and his family would be killing, if they didn't drink animals instead. The snow-boarder girl, the man at the power plant, the groundskeeper, Uncle Waylon – I can just feel sad for them now, instead of guilty.

The wind passes, and I see us as if from above. We are the mandala of the grass. Everything is one. Edward and me and the ground underneath us and the sky above, the trees and the clouds and the blue and the sun. I still hardly know him, and he hardly knows me. But there is time. We have said what needs to be said, and all the months stretch out in front of us to learn each other's stories and ask questions and find out every little thing about each other. If vampires can exist, what can be impossible? We are intended. How else could he have lived to today? How else could I have come back to Forks? And here we are. His hand is clasping mine. Pinky swear, and ring finger, and every other one, too.

_I imagine her beautiful dove feet, dancing over the grass. I know that I will bring her here again. And again and again and again. _

My eyes start to leak and I try to wipe them on my sleeve again. "I shouldn't do this, should I?" I ask him. "It makes it hard for you." The scent – that he doesn't hate, but loves; so much that he can barely hold himself back from drinking me alive. "I'm sorry!"

"Don't," he says. "Here."

"You have a handkerchief?"

"My mother told me to always carry one."

I imagine his mother, the vision I have of her from what he wrote in his journal. She lives in him, too. "Thank you."

The snow-white cotton smells like starch and him. I could keep it over my face forever. But then he wouldn't have it to give to me when I need it. I wipe the last bit of tear from my eyes, and fold the handkerchief into a square, and give it back to him.

Away down the mountain, a flock of crows starts cawing. Perhaps they have found an owl.

* * *

_To all whose gifts are in this story, and to all who may receive it._


	52. Flight

Content Advisory: This chapter will contain brief but intense and disturbing images. PM me if you have questions.

* * *

_"__I have never been so happy as I am right now. This is the summer that was denied me. Lying in a sun-warmed field with a young lady, bantering gently like this. Even if it is only the lamb's tail of March."_

* * *

**Flight**

"_Well, well, what have we here?" _

I am brought bolt upright by the thoughts carried on the voices of the crows.

One finger to Bella's lips, and another over my own. They cannot hear us yet, but they will, if they turn up our trail.

How did this happen? What are they doing here? _Why didn't Alice_ _**see**_?

Perhaps she did. The cell phone in my hand shows not even the barest sliver of a bar.

I hadn't _planned_ to bring Bella here. It had just … happened. When her eyes met mine. All the moments along the way when Alice could have stopped me – with a thought, a phone call, a text – she hadn't. And I hadn't stopped myself.

I glance at the time. Esme is home, Carlisle at the hospital. Emmett and Rosalie must be boarding the ferry to Edmonds right now – on their way to "Midnight Drift" at Evergreen Speedway. If Alice is where I saw her headed in her mind, she is at the library with Jasper, reading to preschoolers – his vacation from the murk of adults' emotions.

_I wouldn't have hunted you down, boy, but you've crossed my path. You and your little pet._

We should have killed these animals when we had the chance! When we were all together, and had them outnumbered. But Carlisle refused.

In the coven leader's mind I can see that he _feels_ exactly where I am. This is his talent, which I already sensed in his thoughts the night we ran them down. He can't feel Bella – _yet_ – because he has never been in her presence; but her scent was on my jacket that night, and it lies thick with mine on the trail he is sniffing.

My finger still on her lips, Bella is barely breathing, pupils dilated, holding as still as a startled fawn.

"_James."_

His lieutenant is not interested in a side trip for one measly girl. Maybe they'll decide that it's not worth the exertion, not worth the vendetta.

A cloud passes over the sun. My skin is dead white again, and Bella's is risen in goose bumps. The crows are silent.

The minute I run, James will _feel_ it, and nothing will launch him after us faster than that. So long as there is the chance that we may be passed over –

He replays in his mind every ignominious detail of the scene outside of Port Angeles. "_The way they treated us was_ _disgraceful__._ _You said so yourself_."

I wonder if Alice sees this – this dream of an idyllic afternoon, turning into a nightmare.

The one called Laurent shakes his head. "_We were supposed to just get across their land and go on."_

She must be seeing it. She has to. But what good can it do?

James is dreaming of a breakneck chase; and the revenge he intends to have at its end.

It's impossible. A chase like that will make a burst of new futures with every twist and turn. Even if Alice can call the family together, even if she can somehow track our course, there will be too many possibilities. They'll never find us in time.

With shaking hands I take off my jacket and motion Bella onto my back, then pull it over her and put my arms through the sleeves. She is slight enough that I can just manage to wear the jacket with her inside. I pull the collar up, to protect her head. Her face is pale, but she obeys me without a murmur.

I want to run _right now_, before it's too late. Or else charge down there and throw myself against these attackers ... Memory of Jasper's thoughts whispers in my ear, his iron grip on me while Carlisle parlayed: _Hold steady. _I've lived in my brother's head, cheated shamelessly when we've played chess, and every other contest as well. But I never bothered to _learn_ from him. Now I wish I had paid more attention.

"_I wonder what you keep her for?" _

Wrapped tight to my back, Bella locks her slender arms across my chest, as her heart echoes through my body like thunder, the heat and scent of her all trapped against me like a summer storm.

"_Bringing her out here to the middle of nowhere so you don't have to share? Maybe you cheat on your diet with her, too …"_

James sees and tastes pure red. Tuned to his and his coven's every thought, so do I. I shut down my lungs, as his mate inhales Bella's scent. Through his eyes I see her lick her lips.

I see much more than that.

A terrified young girl on a snowboard, fleeing desperately, _dangerously_, down a slope that is much too steep. The three vampires chase leisurely in waning daylight under a pale half moon. The images jump. The girl is on her back in the snow. The two men have her shoulders pinned, one to each, her sleeves ripped away, and her wrists in their mouths. The girl's lower body is naked, and the red-haired woman is kneeling on her legs. She lets the girl buck her hips a little, but nothing more. Screams fill the air. The redhead is fingering at the girl's crotch. Then fisting, then pushing with her knee, splitting the girl's pelvis in half. She drinks from the pool of ruined abdomen. The mountainside is silent except for the sound of her lapping.

The three of them turn, and start questing up our trail.

_Run!_ But I _can't_. If I move before they come within earshot and direct scent, they will know that I have an extrasensory gift. It won't deter them; only bring them on me in a swift and savage attack. Without my family, and with Bella in the way – it will be a slaughter.

Keeping his tracker's fix on my exact location, James abandons our path and leads his coven in a slow, silent circle to come from downwind. In his memory, human and hazy, a forest like this one shades him. There is a gun in his hand, deer spoor on the ground. _Been a long time since I had game that stood a chance against me._

Bella's heart and blood and breath are a metronome against my back.

I need to turn the tables. I need to lead instead of being driven. But if I give James his hunt, will he take it? Will he chose a winding chase on my scent trail, instead of a straight rush to the kill? And can I make Alice see what I'm doing? Can I show her, just by my decisions, where I need her and the family to wait for us?

I hear the first echo of Bella's heartbeat reach James' and his coven's ears. My muscles scream again to run, but my enemy's stealth and silence are too perfect. If not for my gift I would never know they were there. So I must play sitting duck, while James waves his companions into formation – himself and Laurent in front, Victoria, their fastest, hanging back and to the side, inconspicuous and deadly.

Bella can't be anywhere near when our covens meet. The cliff where she fell. It's not far from Quileute land. If I can get her there, _leave _her there ... Everything depends on James thinking she is still with me when she isn't. If he doesn't see her he can't form his link, he can only follow by scent. I wish Jasper were here. Surely he'd think of something better than just bait and switch.

There's no more time. I have to commit.

_Alice, if you weren't watching me before, you better be watching me now. See me. See what I have decided._

I hold it clear and hard in my mind: I won't know the route until I run it, but the goal, the cliff. I close my eyes, to see nothing but that promontory, and me, sprinting across the final miles, buying the extra seconds to separate Bella from her clothing, hurl her out across the water, and then run on, leading James and his coven with my signature and Bella's fragrant clothes. I visualize Alice: rising out of the water to catch Bella, pulling her under the waves before my pursuers arrive, and then thinking to me the destination where the rest of us will be waiting, to tear these marauders apart. Alice will have to get out of there fast, take Bella deep, so as not herself to be detected by James' gift. Maybe he won't follow me all the way to that point of land. Maybe he'll hold off and wait to see where I run from there ...

Suddenly the wind shifts, carrying the nomads' scent to me. James curses in his mind, but I am freed! Anchoring Bella's arms and legs around me I leap the entire breadth of the meadow in a single bound to land only for a moment in a tree, before skimming forward to the next and the next.

The few extra seconds that the wind has given me are distance, and I use it to leave as long and bewildering a trail as I can through the treetops before these animals can get close enough to see the branches waving in my wake.

This will only work if James decides to ignore where his gift tells him I am, and hunt us by scent alone.

Bella clings to me with all her human strength. The branches rake us as I leap like some crazed kung fu hero from one pine to the next. Even through my jacket, Bella cannot help but be lashed and bruised; and yet, except for her heartbeat and ragged breathing, she has not made a sound. My chest breaks open for her, there where she had put her sweet, warm hand, and then her cheek and ear, listening for a thing that has not moved in eighty-nine years.

_See me Alice. See me! _We've never done this before - talking with our gifts - not at _this_ distance, without contact or context, and me unable to hear her thoughts in reply.

I return to the earth and tear a zigzag trail down the forested slope for as long as I dare before doubling back on it and leaping upward again and away. Bella's stomach heaves against my back at the speed and the changes in direction. I fear she may faint. Or vomit.

The meadow bursts bright to me through the trio's eyes. And there is the scent trail, vanishing in our lain-upon grass. Through the eyes of his mate, I see James grin.

"_Good boy! You're going to give me so much fun. I should almost let you live for this." _

He stills, feeling, following my trace with his eyes closed.

_As if you could outrun me, with that fragile bag of blood in your arms. Or is she on your back?_

"_We will make enemies with this,"_ Laurent sighs.

The other two look at him with scorn. _"They were never our friends."_

Victoria wants to play. James wants to make me watch. Memory flares, of indignities he had suffered at the hands of the coven that had turned him. He is long ago quit of them. One by one he sent them to their final hell. I see plans for a similar campaign against my family, as he contemplates leaving me limbless, but alive – a warning – beside a small pile of ash and Bella's unrecognizable corpse.

With a soft laugh, he tracks my every move. _Oh, you're a city boy, aren't you? __Don't know the first thing about hunting. Or being hunted._

Good! Think that, you bastard! Think of me as nothing but a rabbit running from you!

Before the chambers of Bella's heart can fill for another pulse, they are after us, following every twist and turn of the trail I've left behind.

Green and black and sudden slopes.

Holding my plan tight, willing Alice to see.

Locking into James' thoughts, because he could change his mind at any moment and slice across the labyrinth straight for us.

Looking ahead through the zooming trees, finding the zig-zag path that will leave the lightest trace, leaping across spaces to make gaps in our scent, circling and looping, buying time for Alice to gather our forces, using every dodge to push closer to the edge of the park and the final dash.

I feel spasms in Bella's muscles. Is it terror? Or is she weakening? _Don't let go._ I need to keep one arm free to grab at branches in our mad caroms from tree to tree. _Hold you forever._ That's what she whispered against my neck. That swim, that climb. _Hold me, Isabella, one more time. Don't let go._

As Alice did when Jasper left, I build again and again the future that I am running toward. And if she isn't there when we arrive? What then? Run for the border? Give Bella to the wolves? Make a stand?

Three. Only three. Is all that it took to pin me, render me helpless. I feel the harsh snow again against my cheek. These three will not take care for me, as my siblings did. Already their thoughts are rehearsing how best and swiftest to incapacitate me. Where to hold and who will rip. They have done this before. Many times. Against newborns and seasoned fighters alike. I see a hundred variations in their minds, of a Bella-scented girl cowering in terror as they unmake me.

We've reached the south fork of the Calawah; thirty miles as the crow flies; almost a hundred as I have run. The sun is dipping below the horizon, and Bella's strength is almost gone. There's no point running in the water to hide scent – the enemy can hear me splashing through it.

If Alice has seen me, if she has reached all our family … they will have to abandon human transportation to assemble in time. If Rose and Emmett were already on the ferry when she called them … will Carlisle, Esme, Jasper and I be enough to prevail against this hardened coven? The thought of _casualties_ shivers through me.

James' thoughts chase me, as all three of them steadily gain against my path.

_We'll see how holier than thou you are when her blood is in your mouth, boy. It'd be worth going without, just to see you drain her._

He conjures again the scene of me reduced to nothing but head and torso, and in it forces a bared and bitten breast to my helpless lips. Thirst and lust blaze together as he imagines the fragrance of her blood from what he had smelled on my jacket, and now on our trail.

It's too much. More than I can endure. Bella's real scent is hot in my nostrils, driven hard by the frantic pumping of her heart. Her pulse is everywhere – in my ears and at every point that our bodies touch. Her blood scent pours into me through our clothing and my skin. I want her. I want her. Every greedy inhalation our pursuers take of her, every lurid anticipation in their minds, only resurrects my own darkest and most horrid fantasies. I have held Bella only briefly, in an ocean of frigid water. But it is enough that I know, oh, how I know, _exactly_ the heat of her flesh, and the temper of her bones. I can _feel_ her, in my arms, under me, parting so sweetly under my teeth, gushing heaven's red fount all over my tongue and into my mouth; her cries, her struggle –

I run and leap and dodge, confounding our trail with every trick I can think of, but I can't get away from my own muscles that want nothing more than to pull Isabella from my back and take her right here and now, before the three behind us can catch up. They will find such a demon when they do.

_Help me, Alice, help me! Please be there._

I can't shut out the evil that follows me, because I have to track its exact location. Hunger and rage and pain and desire - use it then, _use_ it, turn it all into speed. Another five-mile circle. Leap away from the closed loop of scent.

And James is done. _I'm not going to waste that much time with you._

No more game. They are racing flat out for me.

I leave the forest behind, picking a path where houses and cars are fewest, parting the air in a blur. I don't even know if Bella can breathe at this speed. It doesn't matter. I'll be there before she has time to lose consciousness.

Forks is behind us. Racing straight for the coast, now, leaving those murderers in my dust. I don't care who sees or doesn't. I'm nothing but a gust of dark wind.

If Alice isn't there, hasn't positioned the ambush by now, it's too late.

I see the bluff. See the ghost of Bella standing at the edge with her arms stretched wide.

Alice's thoughts are in my ear. _You can't lead them to us, Edward! James will feel us and run away. _I glimpse a relentless war of attrition – over years – that would follow. The humans killed to bait and drive us._ You have to make a stand._

She floods me with a different vision, wavering and changing, born of her Sight and Jasper's plan. I'm running with Bella's clothing clutched to my chest, leading the nomads to our house. James is gloating because he can feel that Esme is the only one at home.

_We have to do it this way, Edward._

Inferior force. The only way to lure them into a closed space, then distract them enough for the rest to swoop in, and catch them before they scatter. No prisoners.

The ragged last edge of Alice's Sight shows James and his coven bursting into the house on my heels, tearing into Esme and me, livid because they see that Bella isn't there. Esme's cell phone is in her pocket on speed-dial. The plan is for her to touch the key through her blouse once all three are inside. Jasper will lead the charge from four directions. It will take time for him to arrive from beyond James' range.

There's no more time. I'm at the cliff. My speed has bought me seconds. Seconds to haul Bella from my back. To tear off her clothes. Every stitch. Because the innermost garments carry the strongest scent.

She lies in my arms, trembling, barely comprehending. I curl her knees to her chest, wrap her arms around her shins, hold her in a ball. "Don't let go."

She gazes up at me, and so help me God, I kiss her mouth. One moment. One eternity.

And then I throw her – out, out, over the waves.

* * *

A/N: Thank you, _averysubtlegift,_ for your gift of beta. Thank you, WoodLily and punz, for pre-reading and courage. (I tweaked, tweaked, tweaked afterwards. ALL errors and awkwardness are my own!) Thank you, dear readers, for your wonderful company on this journey.

I owe great literary debt to _silveraure_'s _Wild at Heart_. Hers is the canon that I draw from in my characterization of James and Victoria and Laurent. This brilliant little story last updated on 6-26-2011, and remains, oh alas, unfinished; but a gem nevertheless. If you want to know what drives the tiny little glimpses of these three nomads as they've appeared in this brief passage of Garment, I invite you to read their gloriously told back-stories in _Wild at Heart_. s/5826692/1/Wild_At_Heart


	53. Her Relations

**53 – Her Relations**

I'm flying. Flying. Defying the laws of physics.

_Edward kissed me._

He kissed me. His beautiful mouth on mine.

It felt like a promise.

It felt like farewell.

Right before he skipped me out over the ocean.

To play with the orcas. To sleep with the fishes.

There's no sunlight. Only grey sky above and dark, dark water below.

And I'm falling. Even though he threw me from way up high on the cliff. Even though he threw me so fast and so hard. It's still a parabola, and I'm falling down the slope of it. The water is rushing up. God only knows how deep it is, how far out from shore.

Bursting up through the crest of a wave. White and black. How big will its jaws be? I expect an impact. With teeth. Instead, something hard and cold and wet wraps around me and falls backward in the same direction of my fall. Slippery. We're all slippery when wet.

I gasp in hard and a hand clamps over my nose and mouth.

"Bella!"

Alice.

She's naked like me.

The water swallows us whole.

She has me. Tight. One hand on my face, the other arm around my arms and body. Her flesh is hard, like Edward's, and so I really feel her breasts against my back. And the movement of her legs. She's beating them in a very small arc but really fast – it makes almost a humming vibration up the bottom of my spine. We're moving fast – like a torpedo through the water, maybe faster. Away.

And down.

I feel the pressure in my ears, pushing in.

Don't take me too deep. I'm going to need to breathe.

My eyes are open but I can't see anything; we're too deep for light.

Alice, take me up. It's time to take me up.

Her hand is like a seal over my nose and mouth. Nothing can get in or out.

Alice, I'm not like you. I can't hold my breath forever.

She has to know, she _has_ to know, that humans need air to live.

Take me up! Alice!

We're just speeding through the water, though I can only tell by the feeling of it slipping past my skin, by the resistance against my head as Alice ploughs me through. My lungs are burning and I'm panicking, which only makes it ten times worse.

Alice!

I can't help myself; I start to struggle, even though it will only use up my air faster. Alice holds me tighter. Her hand on my face hurts. Everything hurts. Why won't she take me up? I can't tell which is up or down any more. I see black spots and bright flashes inside my eyes. My chest feels like it's on fire and going to burst at the same time, even with Alice's arm around me like an iron band.

I'm going to black out.

And then I'm going to die.

I would give my life. For one kiss. Just one. That's what I said. But it's not true. Not any more. I want more. I want to live. I want to see Edward again. I want to kiss him again, too.

Too late.

The blackness closes in behind my eyelids. No more sparks. No more light.

Suddenly my face is in air.

"Breathe, Bella!"

I almost can't remember how.

She makes me, squeezing with her arms, holding my head above the water so I can suck in a breath that burns as much as the one she forced out.

And then she has me again, and we're underwater again. I let go this time. Just let go. Until I can't, until I'm burning again, struggling again, because my body won't go down without a fight. But we're at the surface again, in time again, and this time she lets me gasp and choke and breathe as long as I want.

She's holding me softly now, just gently treading water, as the waves carry us up and down, up and down. Her voice sounds like she's crying.

"Oh, Bella, oh, Bella," she says, over and over. And, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

She's holding me and rubbing my arms. "Are you okay? I had to get us away from there fast. It was the only way. Are you okay?"

Only now do I realize how frozen I am. Alice's body is as frigid as the water, and there's no warmth for me anywhere. I'm shaking so hard I think I may fall apart, and all I can do is cry.

Alice is swimming with me again – on the surface now, slowly now – keeping my face above water. I can't do anything but let her tow me.

She's talking to me, but I only hear half of it. "Sorry," and "Okay," and "Safe."

We swim forever.

Her feet touch bottom, and before I can get upright she has me in her arms and she's carrying me out of the thin surf onto a beach. It's full dark, and I really can't see anything but shapes. Rocks? Trees? All I really know is that there is wind soughing high above. And I'm even colder in the air than I was in the water. My arms and legs feel all heavy and numb.

Alice puts me down on something soft. Ferns, maybe? On the knees of a very big tree. And then she's gone. Not far: I hear movement, feel it like a corporeal wind. Brittle things are being dragged, broken, and then there is one really big, really scary ripping sound.

"I'm here, Bella, I'm here."

She's a slightly paler shape in front of me, fussing with the things she's gathered, her hands a blur. I smell smoke, then there is a glow, and I see that she is making fire. With a blunt stick between her hands, turning it back and forth too fast to really see, the end of it already boring a pit in the flat inside of a small log that she has split in half. My Dad taught me about this once – how the inside of the wood will be dry, even if the outside is soaking wet. You have to get an old log, though, not a green one.

I watch her build the fire, from a pile of the tiniest shreds of the inner part of the log, to larger slivers of it, to twigs, to split sticks that catch on their dry insides until the water is driven out and they burn. And it's a fire, and I can see and I'm even getting warmed by it. A drizzling rain is coming and in another blur Alice has made a lean-to of pine boughs against the tree, big enough to shelter us and the fire.

I haven't said a word this whole time, and Alice crouches in close to me again.

"Bella," she whispers.

I lean toward her and she has her arms around me at once. Even with the fire, her body stays colder than mine. I don't care.

"What happened?" I ask. It's so weird, the two of us, sitting here in the woods, naked as a pair of jay-birds.

"There were others. They wanted to hurt you."

"Vampires?" Is that what Edward and I were running from? I start to feel dizzy and nauseous.

"Yes. But you're safe, now, Bella; you're safe here."

It's way past dark now. My truck is still at the school. But I'm not. My Dad …

"What about Edward?" How many of them were there? Where is he now? _What if they've caught up to him?_ I think of how strong Edward is. But they would be just as strong. Bad pictures are in my head and I can't stop the whimpering that comes up my throat. I can't imagine a world without Edward in it. I don't want to.

Alice holds me tighter. "It's going to be okay. I promise. I promise."

How would she know?

"Where did they come from?" Even though I've known for a long time that the Cullens are … different … it never really occurred to me that there might be _others_ like them. Even now that Edward has told me that he and his family are vampires, I never thought …

"They had passed through before. Hunting. We ran them off. They weren't supposed to come back. I never saw them coming back."

"Hunting?"

"Edward told you it was a bear, didn't he?"

He lied. Still lying. All the victims, the way their bodies were left – not by Edward's family, but not by a bear, either.

I imagine velociraptors as smart as humans – smarter – hunting in packs. Stronger than King Kong. Stronger than T- Rex. Too fast even to see. Able to pass as human wherever they go. Just like Edward and his family.

I remember how I felt, thinking of Edward biting me, killing me, leaving me like the others had been left. It didn't seem evil or wrong to me. I would have given him my life that way, if he needed it, or couldn't help himself. I still would. Even Alice, I think I would. Because of love. But without that … I shiver. "I guess he didn't want to scare me."

Alice sighs. "They weren't supposed to come back. The last I saw they were heading east: for Seattle, and then Boise …"

I don't really understand what she's saying. About seeing.

"Victoria is slippery. They follow her."

I'm still stuck on the fact that 'they' means more than one. How can Edward be safe if they catch him? And my Dad. My Dad could be _anywhere_, right now, looking for _me_.

"Alice!" I feel my heart beating out of my chest again, climbing up my throat again. I clutch at her arm. "What's going to happen now?"

"We have to kill them. We have no choice any more. Even Carlisle sees it – "

_There's something else in the woods with us._

I can feel it, _hear_ it, moving fast in the dark, coming toward us.

Not something … some _things_. Big things. Alice shouldn't have made the fire! It's like a beacon showing exactly where we are!

"Alice!"

"Shhh, Bella, it's okay."

It's not okay. I see reflections of the firelight from what can only be eyes out in the dark. Way too high off the ground to be any dog or cat I ever saw. And bear don't travel in packs.

Alice wraps me up in her thin arms and holds me close, her nose next to my ear. I hear a horrendous growling from the dark. I'm too scared to look, and just hope it will be over quickly.

"You're safe, Bella; the cavalry is here." _Safe?_ Is she _crazy?_

"Alice."

My eyes fly open. That was Uncle Billy's voice!

I see more than reflecting eyes, now. I see big shapes in the dark at the rim of the fire's glow. Shadow wolves. But they're not shadows. They are real, and big; bigger than grizzly bears. The firelight flickers over them, making it hard to see exactly where they are, making them seem to move even though they are standing still.

Uncle Billy is riding on the back of one of them. He looks like a wolf himself, except that I can see that actually he's wearing a pelt. The wolf head is over his own head, so that his face is under the shadow of the upper jaw. The forelegs drape down over his arms and the rest of the pelt covers his back. It's eerie and scary to see him like this, especially the way that his stump is hidden by one hind leg of the pelt, while his other leg sticks out past the paw. It makes him look like he has one wolf leg and one human leg.

"You broke the treaty."

Alice stands up, and the way that she faces him, without a stitch on, completely revealed in the firelight, reminds me that I'm buck naked, too. It's not like Uncle Billy hasn't seen me bare, but I was three then, running around in the rain and mud outside his house. It's not the same. I'm not as brave as Alice, and so I stay hunched in a ball on the ground, trying to hide myself.

"I had to," Alice answers. "To keep Bella safe."

A rumbling growl from the shadows vibrates my breastbone. Uncle Billy says something in Quileute, and it stops. He stares straight at Alice without even blinking.

"She's not your people."

"I brought her to you."

The way they're facing off is scary. And the way the giant wolves are surrounding our lean-to isn't helping. Uncle Billy's voice barks through the air.

"You didn't protect the land. Those men, and that girl, their blood is on your hands, on your heads."

"The treaty never – "

He cuts her off with one hand.

"It's understood! You all were too busy sniffing around what isn't yours. People died ugly because you couldn't hold your borders. And still we gave you grace. You let the killers go. And still, we gave you grace. Now it's Bella. Almost walked the spirit road for your arrogance: and here you stand on our land, telling not asking. There is no more grace. The treaty is broken. You are strangers to us now."

This is what all the bad blood is about? Some kind of treaty between the Cullens and the Quileutes? What the Cullens are. What the Quileutes are. The bogeyman. Sasquatch.

What Jacob was keeping me in the dark about.

Maybe it's the chilling wet air. Maybe it's being naked here in front of a fire and my father's friend. Maybe it's seeing with my own eyes that every scary story ever told to make children behave is actually terribly, terribly real. Maybe it's all of this and worrying about Edward, and my Dad, but I'm shaking and covered in chicken skin, and I can barely breathe.

"Take care of Bella," Alice says, laying her hand softly on my head.

"She's not your concern."

There's a rumbling sound coming from the shadows again. The wolves are growling, showing their teeth. Big, long, gleaming teeth. And everyone's talking about me like I'm not even here.

"Alice, what's happening?"

"I have to go. You have to stay."

"What's going on? What about Edward? What – ?"

Alice goes a little slack. Can a vampire have a seizure? The thought that she, maybe other Cullens too, could have _weaknesses_ scares me. Before I have time to think too much, she recovers, and looks at me sadly.

"I can't stay, Bella. My family needs me. I have to go. You stay. Stay here. Stay."

She turns her head. "Goodbye, Chief Black."

And then she's running. The edges of the firelight glint from her white form as she weaves among the trees at almost human speed. I wonder if she is giving me a sight to remember her by. And then she's gone.

I feel a shadow behind me and turn. I see Sam's face under the hood of a wolf head and pelt. He's holding some kind of short reed to his mouth. I see his cheeks puff and then some kind of powder or smoke blows in my face.

The waters of oblivion close over my head.

* * *

_Thank you WoodLily, for your nick of time beta._


	54. Homecoming

**Homecoming**

"She's waking up."

It's February vacation and Gran told my Mom that she _has_ to bring me to her house because it's been two whole years and she wants to see me before I lose all my baby teeth. That's not even true, because I've only lost one so far, but I don't mind that Gran says it. Gran's house is cold. It's always cold here on the bay, but her quilts are warm, and she always has me sleep on top of a wolf pelt, which is warmest of all.

I have a runny nose and a cold, and Gran is bringing me some of her ginger fish broth to have in bed.

My cold must be really bad because my nose hurts. My whole face does. I'm trying to get up and I'm finding that my body hurts all over, too. I smell cedar, and wood smoke, and it's dark, not like Gran's house. And crowded with people, not like Gran's house at all.

Voices float in and out of the space around me like spirits. Spirits I used to know. Auntie Sue, the big girls – Rachel and Rebecca – and Leah and Emily, too.

I swear I'm opening my eyes and getting up, but nothing's happening. Rebecca's voice says, "Help her up, Jacob."

I know I'm on a bed in a room, but the walls and the faces and the furniture are all misty and far, hovering in the distance four light years away, when Gran was still alive. Someone's helping me sit up and it hurts wherever their hands go and then the walls and faces and furniture zoom back to their proper places, and suddenly everything comes back to me, like a freight train.

The woods, and the meadow, and flying through the forest on Edward's back. The tree branches beating and clawing. Being thrown, and being caught. Alice swimming me under water. Almost drowning. Almost freezing. And the kiss. The kiss. The imprint of Edward's lips on mine tugs at my gut. The way he was so desperate and so gentle. The way it felt like he poured his whole soul into my mouth.

I'm full awake, now, and my heart is jumping all around in my chest. Edward. Edward. He's got to be all right. He has to. He has to. And my Dad …

It's Jacob helping me sit up in the bed. I'm wearing a tee shirt, sweat pants and a very heavy hoodie, I'm covered in quilts, and still I'm cold enough that my teeth are just shy of chattering. I'm sore and nauseous and hungry all at the same time, and I have a headache.

Auntie Sue is coming over with a bowl of something delicious and steaming in her hands.

"Here you go, baby. We've called your Dad. He'll be here soon." The other women are stand-off-ish, and stay puttering in the kitchen, or sitting around the table there.

My hands aren't too steady so Auntie Sue helps me hold the bowl, and even spoons it for me. It's fish broth all right, with the ginger, and some kind of wild chive. Auntie Sue's hair is almost like I remember my Gran's – a long braid going down her back. But Gran's was mostly grey instead of mostly black. I hear men's voices coming from another room, and think of the last time I was fished out of the ocean. This place is about as opposite of the Cullens' house as anywhere I could imagine. It's small and dark like my Dad's house, but has more smells: animals and people and cooking and yes, the cedar and wood smoke – and tobacco, and sea damp.

Eating isn't too comfortable. My mouth and jaw are sore to touch and the inside of my lower lip stings something awful with the salt from the soup. It makes me think of my first day in Forks, when I sat next to Edward and bit my lip so hard it drew blood, and it stung when I ate the apple. And I feel it again: the circles, and returning, and reliving where I've been before. The path and the fir tree; the cliff and the water; and now here, wrapped up in someone else's clothes, and drinking soup again. I remember my dream about the salmon; remember what salmon do in their lives. I think of Edward's journal, and the poem that his mother translated so, so long ago. About Ithaka. The water road that leads you so far away that you end up coming home.

Auntie Sue coaxes me. "Easy, honey, easy. Just sip. Just sip." Her eyes run all over my face. Jacob's still perched on the edge of the bed, making sure I don't keel over. He looks angry.

I mouth at him, "What?"

"You look like someone beat the shit out of you."

"Mind your words, Jacob Black!" Auntie Sue tries to get my attention back on the soup, but I can't.

"Is it really bad?"

"You've got a hand mark." His own hand comes up, imitating on his face where Alice's hand had clamped me shut. "Your Dad's gonna see it. He'll know what it is. He's gonna ask questions. Everyone's gonna see, gonna wonder who did that to you. And why."

I can't handle it. I feel disfigured. I start to cry. Bad idea. My nose is in bad enough shape as it is.

"I'll stay home. I won't let anyone see."

Auntie Sue shoos Jacob out of the room and gathers me up in her arms.

"Shhh, baby, shhh, it's okay, it's okay. Nothing's broken. We checked. All this will fade." I wonder what kind of bruises I have on my body. I wonder who saw, who washed me and dressed me. I hope it was just Auntie Sue.

I hear a door slam open and feel a draft.

"Billy!"

Dad! He's safe. He's safe.

"She's in with Sue."

"Jesus Christ."

He gets to the kitchen in two steps and then he sees me.

"Bells. Jesus."

"She's okay, Charlie. We took care of her."

My Dad pulls his cell phone out. "I'm calling Carlisle."

Uncle Harry is in the doorway with another of the older men. Everybody exchanges glances.

"Don't even say it," my Dad growls. He's walking over to the bedside as he works his way through the phone menu and operators. His free hand hovers over my head and cheeks, like he wants to touch me but doesn't dare. "What do you mean he missed his shift?"

A bucket of ice dumps through my stomach.

"Never mind, I'll try his cell."

Dad snaps his phone shut and crouches down beside where Auntie Sue is on the chair by the bed. "How bad is it, kid?"

"I'm okay, Dad, really."

He just shakes his head. He stands again staring at me with angry eyes as he calls to his friends. "Harry, Billy – "

"Take it outside, Charlie. You men just take that outside right now."

There's clumping of shoes and creaking of Uncle Billy's wheels and the house suddenly feels empty. My Dad's voice still carries in. "What the hell happened to her – "

"Bella." Auntie Sue's voice won't take no for an answer this time. "Finish up the soup. You need it."

I slurp in silence, while the men's voices rise and fall outside. They must have moved away from the house, because I can't hear the words. Only that my Dad is hopping mad.

"Rache made frybread," Jacob says. "I saved you some."

I remember their mother's frybread when we were little: wrapped around chunks of salmon straight off the grill, the bread a little sweet and the fish a little salty and all of it fat and good. I nod, and Jacob manages a small grin as he goes to fetch a plate.

"Bella." Auntie Sue's eyes are on the bowl and the spoon and my mouth, and that's how I know she's going to say something serious.

"There's such a thing as knowing too much. And there's such a thing as not knowing enough. Right now you got one foot in each."

Jacob is back with the plate.

"Knowing what the Cullens are is knowing too much, Bella. Not knowing that there's those who'd wipe out a whole village for knowing, that's not knowing enough."

Jacob glances at her and rips me off a piece of the frybread.

"There's a reason we had a treaty with the Cullens – lots of reasons; but none of that matters now, because it's broken. They broke it."

She lets me eat. Maybe she's putting her words on the frybread on purpose.

"What matters right now is you – what you know and what you don't know. You understand me, Bella? I can't take away what you've seen, what you know. I can only tell you what you _don't_ know, what you _need_ to know. Words fly on the wind, Bella. And bring back teeth. We're a small tribe. If you love your Dad., if you care about anyone that lives here – or Forks – you can't tell anything to anyone. You get it? You got to put today in a box and seal it and put it away, and never take it out again. Ever."

Jacob splits the last piece with me.

"You understand?" Auntie Sue asks.

I just nod, and swallow. My Dad and the men are coming back in.

"I'm takin' you home, kid."

I wonder what they told him. I don't dare ask. I wonder why Dr. Cullen missed his shift tonight. I don't dare ask about that, either. I just pray. Let everything be all right. It has to be. Uncle Billy wouldn't let my Dad and me leave the reservation if it wasn't safe, if the bad vampires were still around. It's over now. It has to be. Not talked about, but finished, going downstream. Until the water is clear again. Until everything is normal again.

My Dad's picking me up. Quilts and all.

"Dad, I can walk."

"I know you can. Humor me."

And he carries me out to the cruiser. I wonder what time it is. It must be the middle of the night. Maybe almost daybreak for all I know.

Jacob helps my Dad open the door to the back seat, and they get me in, still all bundled up in the quilts. Auntie Sue is giving my Dad some kind of bag with Tupperware, and something fishy wrapped up in newspaper.

I wonder if Edward is in the tree outside my window. I wonder if he's waiting there to see me come safely home. Not that I want him to worry, but I hope he's there. I'm going to leave my quilt on the rocking chair, even if he doesn't come in tonight. It's a secret handshake. To tell him I'm waiting for him, waiting for us to be able to take up where we left off. I know we'll have to pretend to still not know each other at school. I know we probably can't even talk about what happened today. I don't really care. What matters is for everyone to be safe. And for Edward to know that I still want to be his friend. I will always want to be his friend. Even if the only thing we can talk about is the weather.

My Dad is done saying goodbye to everyone. I've been totally rude and not said anything to anyone, just curled up here in the back seat of the cruiser, half-buried in quilts. It feels good, though. Safe. To be hidden, and quiet.

Talking about the weather with Edward would be just fine by me. I remember the weather over his meadow. The blue sky and the white clouds, that sometimes covered the sun and sometimes didn't. I think of Edward in the sun, looking like some kind of burning angel. But not. Because the sun is just showing his rainbows. He's not fire; he's water. The fire is an illusion. Like ice can feel hot when really it's cold.

Edward.

I have to wait to see him. I can't go to school tomorrow. Probably not for a couple of days. I don't want anyone to see me like this. Like Tyler was. It's my turn, now, I guess. I wonder what my Dad will tell the school? I can feel sneezes brewing in my nose and throat. I really do have a cold. Or I will. It wouldn't be a lie. I wonder if Edward will secretly bring me medicine again? Will it be the same kind, or a different one? Maybe he'll bring it to me already cooked. So I don't have to leave any suspicious smells in the kitchen.

The trees pass from the front of the car to the back in an endless procession as we drive back from La Push. They appear in the headlights and then disappear behind us. It looks weird seeing it from lying down in the back seat. Grey ghosts passing the windows.

I imagine Edward coming in at my window like a pale ghost. Wrapped up in these quilts, I imagine us together on my bed, making the quilts like a tent over us, as I sip on Edward's medicine, and he tells me what it's made of and how it works. I imagine him staying with me, hidden together in the pile of my quilts. I imagine falling asleep in his arms.

* * *

_Thank you for reading._


	55. Carry The News

**Carry the News**

I've been home for three days. And the weekend, so now it's the end of the fifth day. And it's April Fool's Day, too. I'm grounded. My Dad gave me this big lecture about running off with the Quileute boys and climbing rocks by the ocean; about running off _anywhere_ without telling him where I was going; about doing something like that when I was supposed to be waiting for him at the school library. So I guess I know, now, what Uncle Billy and the men told my Dad. I wonder how they explained the finger marks on my face?

Edward hasn't come yet. Not even to secretly leave medicine on the porch. Not even to sit in my Grandma's rocking chair while I'm sleeping. The wood doesn't smell like him any more. I don't understand. Is it because I brought home quilts from La Push, where he and his family aren't allowed to go? I made sure my Dad took them back to Auntie Sue. Maybe the tribe is watching our house? I never see anyone, but maybe they're still angry at the Cullens for breaking the treaty. I don't understand that either. Edward and Alice were saving my life.

My Dad's been at work a lot. Coming home with a frown on his face and not saying much of anything. I guess it's about the "bear." I wonder if he knows that it will never be found. Alice said they were going to kill "it", now, for real. I don't really want to think about that. I think I can understand why Dr. Cullen didn't want to do it at first. How do you kill something that has the same face as you? I hunch up on my bed and try to think happier thoughts.

My arms are still a little sore where Alice had held me so tightly. So are my back and sides and legs where the tree branches whipped me. But the bruises are getting green and yellow now. I go to the bathroom for the millionth time to look at my face. There's nothing else to do all these days. I still don't look normal, but at least it doesn't look like a handprint.

I want Edward. Why hasn't he come?

* * *

Monday morning. I'm sitting in the cruiser with my Dad. He won't let me drive the truck to school. I'm still grounded. At least I've been able to convince him to let me out a little ways from the school. It'll be bad enough showing up on foot. I have my lie all ready to go – I was in a fender bender and face-planted on the steering wheel. Truck is in the shop.

"Bells."

"I'll be at the library, Dad. I promise. I'm not going to go running off again. I learned my lesson."

He sighs, looking straight out the windshield. Just like me.

"I only got one of you, kid. I missed – "

Missed seeing me grow up. I know that. I missed it, too. Missed him. Never understood why Mom didn't.

"Dad, I'm not flighty like that."

I'm really not. It was a one-time thing. But I've just cursed my Mom out big-time. That's not what I meant. I just meant to tell him I'm going to be okay, going to be where he expects me to be.

"I'll be in the library."

"I know. If I can't get there before the school closes I'll send Dave around for you. Just don't get in any cars with anyone else, you hear?"

"I won't."

I want to go now. Edward and his family are probably already there. I want to bust out of the car and run to the school. I want to see Edward's car in its space, away from all the others. I want to get to my locker before the bell rings. I want to sneak my one peek at him when I walk into biology class. And one more when I walk into the cafeteria. When no one's looking. Except him. He'll know. I'm sure he will. I feel him, and his car, pulling at me, tugging at my heart, making my stomach all jumpy and twisty.

"Bella." I feel my Dad turn toward me in his seat. I look at him. His face looks still pretty much the way it did the night after his friend was pulled out of the lake. He's been dealing with this all alone. Somebody he knew since he was a kid. Killed like that. Found like that. I'm a bad daughter.

"Town's full of talk these days."

I can only imagine. I've never actually grown up with anyone for more than a few years at a time. But if I did, and if we were my Dad's age, what would it be like to lose them in such a freakish, horrible way? To see the body. To hear people talk.

"This case won't be closed until I say it is."

A chill runs over me. What will happen if he finds out what _really_ killed Uncle Waylon, and all those others? _Words fly on the wind. And bring back teeth._ What does that even mean? I don't know. And I can't even tell my Dad to just leave it be, just accept that it was a bear, and maybe that bear was really sick and has died in the woods. I can't say anything.

My Dad's looking at me hard. "Look, Bells, just … don't believe everything you hear, okay? People shootin' their mouths off don't know squat. And my boys know better than to talk while there's an investigation going on. So don't go believing everything you hear."

I think of him and Dr. Cullen in that drizzly night, looking at pieces of a man – waterlogged, bloodless pieces. I wonder what Dr. Cullen said that night, wonder what he's writing in his medical report. I'll probably never know.

"Okay, Dad." I kiss him on the cheek. I don't know what else to do. "Have a good day."

I'm out of the car. I walk until I hear the cruiser gone, then I run.

* * *

The sky opens up just as I get to the school. I put up the hood on my parka and run into the building. Edward's Volvo is nowhere to be seen. Neither is Emmett's Jeep. First bell isn't for another ten minutes, and I'm certainly not going to hang around near the doors waiting to catch sight of them. That would be way too obvious.

Just be normal. Just be normal. Like nothing happened. I catch up with Jessica and Mike at her locker before first period. They ask about my face. I tell them my lie. They believe me.

"Does it look really bad?"

"Nah, you can hardly see it."

I know what they're thinking. That I got off way easier than Tyler. I think of Dr. Cullen stitching him up so skillfully, so invisibly. I wonder if he prescribed some kind of magic herb or something to help the skin heal without any lasting scars. Anything seems possible to me now.

Biology is first period, today, and I feel like I'm jumping out of my skin on the way to class. I button myself down as hard as I can, but I am so ready to see Edward. I can barely hear what Jess and Mike are saying because I'm telling myself over and over again, _Just go to your seat, don't stare, don't run to the back of the room and throw yourself on him_.

But nothing, _nothing_, can stop my eyes from going straight to Edward's seat as I walk in the door.

It's empty.

I stare too long, in spite of myself.

Stop it. _Stop it._ Be normal. He has to be normal, too. That means not slipping into his chair until just before the bell – after I'm already in my seat and facing front. That's what he's always done – well, most of the time. Mr. vampire ninja. Lauren is sitting right next to me. I can't sneak any peeks backwards. The class lasts forever and a day. This time it's me who gets up to leave at the first sound of the bell. I make a mess of it, spilling my books on the floor. But I do get a chance to shoot my eyes over to Edward's seat.

It's empty.

It's been empty all class. I know this in my gut. I didn't feel his eyes on me. He didn't come.

Why?

I wonder if I'm going to see his brothers and sisters at the cafeteria without him, just like last time. But why would he do that? It's not like we had a fight or anything.

I wonder if they'll all glare at me like before? Alice wouldn't. Not now. Not after everything that's happened. I think of her careful, tentative hug, how happy she was that I let her braid my hair, the fire that she built to keep me warm. If there's anything going on, she'll tell me. I'm sure she will. Maybe I can find a way to go to her between classes.

I completely fail at paying attention to anything all morning. I'm going to have to get notes from Angela. I just hope to God I _looked_ like I was paying attention. Everything feels weird today. Like people are walking on eggshells around me. Like Jessica is dying to tell me something or ask me something but hasn't found the right opening.

My Dad is right. The town is full of talk, and so is the school. Maybe they want to know if my Dad said anything about his friend, any gory details about the body.

It's lunchtime and I know that I can't just run to the Cullens' table and disappear among them, but I want to. I want to go to their house with the meandering gardens and the trickling water and the echoing bamboo. I want to lie on the fluffy rug with Alice and listen to Edward playing the piano. The sound of that, the memory of their house, fills me up as I walk into the cafeteria and glance over at their table.

No one is there.

Jessica catches me at it, because I have stopped dead.

"I know, right?" she says. "I mean, I know they were a weird family, but it's just horrible."

"Horrible?"

"Yeah, their house burning down like that. Can you imagine?"

"What?" I sound so stupid.

Jessica looks at me like I've got three heads. "You didn't know?"

All I can do is stare back at her.

"Oh my God, Bella." And Jessica launches into the whole story.

"… burned to the ground …"

"… says it had to be arson …"

"… three thousand degrees at least …"

"… all their cars still in the garage, melted to the floor …"

"… sifting the ashes for pieces of bone, or teeth …"

Angela has her arm around my waist and is walking me over to our table and helping me sit down.

"Are you okay?" she whispers.

My heart is racing and I feel sick to my stomach.

How can that house not exist any more? The green drifting in through the windows, the Campbell's soup and the cross and the fragrance and the murmuring brothers and Rosalie's puzzle and the rain on the eaves.

The piano with its dark wing raised. The melody that ached through my heart.

I stare at the five empty seats, the completely vacant table.

"It's so horrible," Jessica says again. "I mean, who would do something like that?"

"It was on the news and everything," Mike adds.

"You didn't see it on T.V.?" Eric asks.

I was too busy dreaming about Edward every day. Waiting for him to come in my window every night. Leaving quilts for him. Sniffing chair rungs.

Everybody is staring at me.

"Your dad never said anything about it?" This is what Jessica has been dying to ask me: do I have any inside details. Like my Dad would actually talk about this at dinner or something.

"I don't think he's allowed to," I mumble.

I need to get away from everyone. I wonder if they can see my feelings on my face.

Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. Be normal.

Be normal.

"Bella, you look really pale. Are you okay?" Angela hasn't left my side.

"I feel … kind of nauseous." It's completely true. Along with weak, and scared.

"You want to go to the nurse's office?" She's my Alice, my human Alice. Catching me as I'm hurled out over black water. Spiriting me away, far from the fray.

"Maybe."

"Did they check you for concussion after your accident?" Keeping me hidden. Keeping my secret. Even though she doesn't know what the secret is.

"I don't remember."

"Come on." And she shepherds me out of there.

* * *

The nurse takes my temperature and spends a long time inspecting my face. I wonder if she believes my story about the steering wheel. She asks me if I feel safe at home. I tell her yes. She gives me two Tylenol and lets me lie down. I tell her I don't want her to call my Dad. I hope this doesn't make her think the wrong thing. But even the wrong thing is better than the real thing.

I lie on the cot. I turn one way and the other. I curl up and straighten out. It doesn't help. Nothing helps. Now I know what worried sick means. I try not to make any noise. Try not to make the nurse get up from her desk to come look in on me.

I'd thought everyone was talking about Uncle Waylon. All the snatches of whispers about "Who did it?" I should have known that would make no sense. Uncle Waylon grew up in Forks, and never left. How would he have any mafia connections? Or CIA. Or aliens.

_Don't believe everything you hear._

Was this what my Dad was talking about, then? Not Uncle Waylon, but the Cullens? I hold onto that as hard as I can. I wonder what my Dad knows? Auntie Sue said I can't say anything to anyone. So how can I ask my Dad?

How many vampires were chasing Edward and me? What happened after he threw me to Alice? She said she had to help her family. She said that they were going to kill the bad vampires.

Every time my mind inches toward the idea of a battle it runs away again. If the Cullens lost that battle, how could Uncle Billy let me and my Dad leave the reservation with the bad vampires still around?

I can't lie still. I have to do something.

I have to go to La Push.

It's the only place I can ask the questions. The only place I can get the answers.

I get up and go to the nurse's desk, tell her I feel better and want to go back to class now. I need to get back into class so I can catch up to Tyler before he leaves. I'm going to need a ride. I almost think the nurse is going to keep me here until my Dad can pick me up after work, but she writes me a note and lets me go.

I spend the last hour of school figuring and planning and turning it over and over in my mind, trying as hard as I can not to think of a black scar in the earth where the Cullens' house used to be, trying as hard as I can to not think of even one of them – no, I won't think that. I can't. My chest and stomach feel hollowed out and twisted in knots all at the same time, right through to the last bell.

I empty my backpack into my locker and run straight to Tyler's van. I tell him I need a lift to the Thriftway to pick up some stuff for dinner. He asks if I want a lift home as well. I tell him no, my Dad's picking me up. Lie after lie. I wonder what's going to happen when all of this catches up to me.

Riding with Tyler and Lauren is awkward, me in the back seat, them in the front. Nobody says anything. Every red light drives me crazy. I try to be nonchalant as I say goodbye in the parking lot.

My Dad's going to be so mad when I'm not at the library waiting for him. But he likes the Cullens. He wanted to call Dr. Cullen right away when he got to Auntie Sue's. He said he won't rest until he gets to the bottom of what happened. If he was talking about what happened to the Cullens, maybe he'll understand why I have to do this; even though I can't tell him what I find out.

We've never gone empty-handed to the res. And Uncle Billy and Jacob have never come empty-handed to our house. That's just how it's done. I wander to the produce section. A box of clementines: that looks right. Small and lots of them, easy to share. I think of my truck – used to be Uncle Billy's truck – and how it smells. I pick up a bag of Starlight peppermints – the sugar free ones. I don't want to poison him after all.

I need one more thing. Something to show that this is a serious question, and I'm sincere. The twist of something that will be burned in the shell. Cigarettes are all locked up behind glass, and I'm too young to buy them. But the chewing tobacco is out where I can get it. It's the middle of the afternoon and there aren't many people in the store. I slip one little can into my pocket as I walk by. I know it's wrong but I just don't want anyone asking questions. All the cashiers know my Dad, know me, and know that my Dad doesn't chew. I don't want anyone taking note of me being here.

The clementines box is too bulky and its wood corners hurt my back through the backpack. I stop in the parking lot and dump them all in the plastic bag, leave the box in an empty shopping cart. Time to go. I walk as fast as I can through town, trying to get to the highway. I can't hitch until I get past the city limits.

I can't run. Someone will notice. Chief's daughter. They'll call the station and it will be all over. It takes forever to get past the last house, get to where the road is lined with just trees again. I turn my back to the direction I'm headed and stick out my thumb. Cars pass me without even slowing down. Is it because I'm walking backward instead of standing and waiting? But I have to. I have to get there before dark.

This all would have been so much easier if my Dad hadn't taken the truck keys. I still can't believe he did that. I guess he really, _really_ didn't want me going off by myself.

I look at the trees beside me, tall and silent and strong. Walking backwards like this, it looks like they're walking backwards, too, away from me. The grandfathers. I pray to them. _Keep the Cullens safe. Hide them in your secret places._ I imagine the seven of them, living in the land like wild animals. They can. It's how they eat to begin with. Maybe they won't miss human civilization that much.

But come back to me, Edward, please?

A logging truck roars toward me, loaded to the top with the bodies of dead trees, straight and heavy and sawed off at both ends. I don't like how it makes me feel as it passes. The grandfathers that I just prayed to, killed and laid flat, on their way to be cut into boards and two-by-fours.

The trucker doesn't stop for me either. But then, he's not going to LaPush.

The cars all still in the garage doesn't mean a thing. If the Cullens needed to escape, cars would only slow them down. They who can run faster than any car ever made, faster than the wind.

It's getting late and I'm getting desperate, and not anywhere near close enough to my goal. It starts to drizzle. Just what I need. Another cold.

I see a car approaching, driven by an older couple. Through the windshield I can see the wife talking to the husband. They look like tourists. The car passes me. I was so sure they would stop. I turn and just keep trudging forward. I don't care if it takes me 'till midnight to get there. I have to go. Have to know.

I hear a sound and look up. The car is backing up towards me. They did stop. The woman has her window rolled down and she calls to me as they come even with where I am.

"Where are you headed?"

"La Push."

She turns to her husband. "You see, Henry, I told you we had to stop for her. What are the odds?"

The man just shakes his head. His wife opens the back door for me.

"Get in. We're going to La Push, too."

She doesn't have to ask me twice. The husband glances at me in the rear view mirror as he pulls back out onto the road. "You live in La Push?"

"Yes," I lie. They are tourists, here for whale watching. They agree to let me off at the general store. I'm pretty sure I can get a ride from there to Uncle Billy's house. I guess I'm lucky that it started raining when it did, made them take pity on me. Lucky that these people who saw me in the rain are normal, and not predators. They ask me where's the best place to eat in La Push and I just lie, because I have no clue. I've only ever eaten at Uncle Billy or Auntie Sue's houses.

They drop me off and I thank them, give them two oranges out of my bag.

The inside of the store smells like leather, jerked fish and smoke. Sam is there, loitering at the counter with the woman who runs it. He looks me up and down as I come in, making a jangly sound with the bells on the door. His eyes say I'm nothing but trouble.

"I need to see Uncle Billy," I say, in a very small voice. Sam shakes his head and walks out. I follow. His car is an old Rabbit. The doors creak, but it runs.

"Can you call my Dad and tell him I'm here?"

He pulls a cell phone out of the pocket of his flannel shirt and tosses it to me. "Tell him yourself." I fumble the phone and it ends up on the floor at my feet. He slows down a little, but doesn't offer me any other help.

Please let this go to voice mail; please let this go to voice mail.

The phone rings once, twice, three times, then I hear my Dad's voice. "You know what to do." And "beep."

"Dad. I'm at Uncle Billy's house." What else can I say? "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Uncle Billy's house is pretty close to the beach. It's old and low. There's a totem pole outside with all the paint weathered off of it. Wolf, raven and whale. I wonder if they're all the same spirit, but just in different bodies. Sam stops in the driveway. Uncle Billy is on his porch, sitting in his wheelchair. I wonder how long he's been there. I offer an orange to Sam, and say thanks for the ride. He cracks a smile and looks sad at the same time. "Go on, now," he murmurs. And then I'm standing alone in front of the house.

Uncle Billy and I just look at each other under the clouds for the longest time.

* * *

I give the sack of oranges to Rebecca, since she's kind of the mom in their house now. I'm pretty sure there's enough to go around, to their other relations, too, even though I've shared a few out along the way.

I thank everybody for looking after me when I was half frozen from getting thrown in the water. We sit there making small talk on the porch for a while, and then Uncle Billy's family drifts away. I open my backpack and give him the mints and the tobacco. Truth is, I have no idea what I'm doing, only that after this long, terrible day there's an ocean of tears rising up in my chest fit to drown me. I'm scared, so scared, from all the questions I couldn't ask, from the rumors at school, from my Dad all tight-lipped at home.

Somewhere behind the clouds the sun goes under the horizon, and it crashes in on me at last - the whole week, the whole day, the big wave that I'm powerless to stop. And I'm sitting on the deck by Uncle Billy's chair, leaning on his good knee, bawling my eyes out.

I hear him sigh, feel his hand, big and heavy and warm, on the back of my neck. A cold mist has come in off the water, but Uncle Billy's hand seems to send heat all the way through me.

"Say what's on your mind, Bella. Just say what's on your mind", he says.

It takes me a lot of hitching and hiccupping and wiping my face on my sleeve before I can breathe well enough to ask the terrible question.

"What happened to them, Uncle Billy?"

"What happened to who?"

"Edward. And … and his family … You know, right? I mean, you … you _know_ …"

"Yes, Bella, I do know."

I just look at him, all my insides shivering and hurting and scared. He looks back at me for a whole minute, maybe more.

"They're dead, Bella."

I can't breathe. I have no air at all. My mouth makes a 'no', but no sound comes out. It's like one of those dreams, where you're screaming and screaming, but nothing comes out.

I suck hard on the cold, damp air, and try again.

"No." I sound like a frog.

"Yes, Bella."

"Not _all_! They can't _all_ …"

"They are, Bella, all of them. They're dead."

I hear a sea gull cry. High and keening. And loud, like it's right above us. It cries again. And again. Uncle Billy's eyes are dark and sad. He puts his hands on my head, and the bird stops calling, and flies away.

There are others about. I see them moving in the corners of my eyes. But they keep a polite distance. Move on about whatever their business may be. Time passes.

"Where?" I ask at last. "Where are they?"

"Where?"

"Edward. And his family. I have to bury them." My throat closes on the words. Stomach clenches. I'm curled against the wheel of Uncle Billy's chair.

He's shaking his head. "Bella."

He sighs.

I wait.

Time passes.

At last, he relents.

"Only way to kill their kind is tear 'em apart and burn the pieces. They go straight to smoke and ash, Bella. Ain't nothing left to bury."

Edward.

Gone straight to smoke and ash.

I see his face, gazing at me as we lay there, upside down to each other in the meadow. I feel his too-hard back under me, his shoulders and waist encircled by my arms and legs. I smell his hair, and his skin. Nothing but ashes, now. Smoke upon the wind. Alice, with her black hair and golden eyes. Naked statue unashamed. Running in beauty. Dr. Cullen. All of them. Their strange, beautiful tribe. Gone.

It's not a bird. It's me. I'm shrieking. And I'm being held down. A piece of jerked fish is being put in my mouth. Someone is pinching my earlobes. People are calling my name. I hear Jacob's voice.

"For Christ's sake, Dad, why the hell'd you have to tell her that?"

"She asked."

* * *

_Thank you for reading._


	56. Only This And Nothing More

_**What has gone before:**_

_"What happened to them, Uncle Billy?"_

_"What happened to who?"_

_"Edward. And … and his family … You know, right? I mean, you … you know …"_

_"Yes, Bella, I do know."_

_I just look at him, all my insides shivering and hurting and scared. He looks back at me for a whole minute, maybe more._

_"They're dead, Bella."_

* * *

**Only This, And Nothing More**

"Why? Why did you kill them, why? What did they ever do to you?"

I'm on the bed in Auntie Sue's house again. I'm thrashing and yelling. I know I'm not making any sense, but it's too late for sense now. Auntie Sue is on the bed with me. She's trying to hold me up, or hold me down, I'm not really sure.

"Why? They never hurt anybody!"

"Isabella Marie Swan!" Uncle Billy's voice compels me. "Stop this foolishness right now."

I stop, just breathing in hiccups.

Auntie Sue is answering me, now that I can hear again.

"We didn't kill them, Bella. The Cullens are dead, but not by our hand."

"But … wolves, I saw the wolves." Big as grizzlies.

"And we brought you home." It's Sam, standing next to Uncle Billy's chair. "Alice was free to go, and she did."

I remember how they all growled at her; remember how my Dad said Uncle Billy wouldn't let Dr. Cullen treat him; remember what Jacob said about them being bloodsuckers. "Why do you all hate them so much?"

Uncle Billy and Sam turn away. Auntie Sue holds me.

"We don't hate them, Bella," she says. "But we know what they are. You don't bring a shark into your house. Not even one that sits and smokes with you like a man."

I think of all the Cullens, as pale as sharks. But Edward's skin is smooth, not rough and sandpapery.

"They were only ever nice to me."

"They're at war with themselves. It's a war they can never win."

"Edward saved my life."

The rims of Auntie Sue's eyes go red. "No, Bella! He put you in danger – from himself, from his family, and from the others too. Tracking an enemy with your scent all over him. Stupid, _heedless_ boy!"

I don't understand what she's talking about.

"His jacket. Your scent was all over it. And he wore it anyway, running on an enemy's trail. Then he and his clan let their enemies leave alive. They're stupid, all of them."

She's angry. "Taking you out where no help could come, after insulting an enemy. He's a child."

How can she talk about him this way? Like he deserved to be killed because he made a mistake.

"What happened to the enemies?" I ask, as I wonder how many of them there are, and if they're still around. My mind throws up pictures of the bad deaths. Pieces of people. Thigh bones cracked open and the marrow sucked out. Just like Brendan said.

"They've been taken care of."

Auntie Sue is looking at me with big, dark eyes. Not red at the rims any more, just serious. Uncle Billy and Sam are right by the bedside again. I feel small.

Can spirit wolves 'take care of' granite people? Spirit teeth cut through what no real tooth can touch?

I suppose they must have burned the pieces.

Like the Cullens were burned.

The bottom falls out of my stomach again and I curl up on the bed. Auntie Sue puts the red and black blankets around me, until I look like a fuzzy bear caterpillar. I hear Sam's feet, and Uncle Billy's wheels, as they go out of the room.

"Shhh, baby, shhhh." She rubs my back for a long time. "It's over. You're safe. That's all that matters. You have to let it go."

My whole body is clenched up tight like a fist.

"What would Charlie do without you?"

In the end, Auntie Sue feeds me dinner at her house. My Dad, too, when he comes. He doesn't say anything. Just takes me home. When I get back to my room after washing up, the keys to my truck are on my dresser. Maybe some kids would say that I won, getting my freedom back without even a lecture. But I don't feel that way at all.

* * *

_I will go down with this ship_

_I won't put my hands up and surrender_

_There will be no white flag above my door_

…

The lyrics keep running through my head. I've only driven this road once before. At night. In the opposite direction. Following Edward's tail-lights. But I went to the library and found the news article about the Cullens' house burning down. It had their address – well, the name of the road they lived off of, anyway. Google maps is my friend. It's daylight. I'm counting on recognizing the way the forest looks when I get close. I can do this.

I don't believe it. I won't believe it. It's all hearsay. I won't let it be true.

_There will be no white flag above my door._

I feel like I have to hurry. Like I've lost days already. Like if I don't get there in time, the fate will have gone too far in the wrong direction, they'll be really gone, and can't come back.

I don't know what I'm thinking. Don't know what I'm doing.

The truck growls unhappily on the grade up into the green, green woods. When Alice was driving me in Edward's Volvo it didn't sound like this at all. Smooth as silk that car drove. The forest looks familiar. I think. It's brighter than it was that day. It's April after all, not March any more. Life is seeping back into everything. There's green from more than just the pines and firs. All the soft, perishable things are starting to put out their shoots. The road seems to wind on forever. It wasn't this long when Alice was driving. But the drive back following Edward … did I miss their driveway?

I'm starting to cry. I won't!

_I won't put my hands up and surrender_

I keep going forward. The road twists and turns. Every turn looks like the final one that leads to their place. I wonder if I need to turn back.

It's there. The mouth of the driveway.

I see it because there are lots of tire tracks and broken bushes. My Dad said they sent every engine in Forks to try to save the blaze. But it was way too late by the time they'd gotten there.

No. No. No.

_I will go down with this ship._

I turn into the drive. The emerald lawn is chewed up in places. The gardens have new flowers in them. The gazebo is there; its trellised vines wear a haze of green.

The house.

It really did burn to the ground. They said even the glass windows melted. I can see it. Blackened slag. Lumps of scorched concrete – the foundations, I guess. There's the fireplace, surrounded by the rubble from the chimney that toppled. I can see past the house, now, to the place where the running water is. I roll down the window.

I hear the water.

Tock.

Water.

A crow.

I get out. The truck's door creaks on me. Loudly. I try to close it softly.

There's yellow tape of course. I don't care.

_I will go down with this ship_

I hear moaning. Like the wind in an attic. Like a ghost. It's me. My face is wet. No rain today. Only me. I can't even make words.

Come back. Come back. Please come back.

Stepping from stone to stone on the walk.

But there's no door here. No parquet floor. No staircase. No cross. No salmon-colored tile, no potpourri, no candles, no Alice braiding my hair, no chicken soup.

I want to find Edward's piano. The keys are surely real ivory. That's like tooth, right? It would survive – like the forensics guys were looking for Cullen teeth in the ashes. But they won't find any teeth because they've all gone to ash. And I won't find any piano keys, because half the floors of the house are crashed into the basement.

_I will go down._

The stairs to the basement must have been made of wood. There's nothing left of them.

I'm stuck here at the edge. With the glass puddles that had been windows. No more eaves for the rain to drip from.

I walk around the edges of where the house was, until it has been circled all the way around with my crying voice.

The crow chimes in again. Or maybe it's a raven. It should be a raven.

"Edward!" I call to him as loud as I can.

"Edward!"

"Alice!"

I call all of them. One by one.

I'm not proud.

I call until my throat is sore. Walking all around the house. Again.

And again.

It's not dark yet, but it will be. I need to go home. But all I want to do is lie down. I'm so tired. My throat hurts. I need to drink some water. I wonder if I could drink dew off the grass.

There are benches in the gazebo. They're very old-fashioned looking. Made of iron. No way comfortable, but I don't care. I need to lie down. Just for a little while. To rest. Not for long, because I'm thirsty, and I can't really drink dew from the grass, or even from the leaves that are unfurling on the gazebo's vines.

I lie down on the bench – the bars of its seat all hard and black metal cold. I dream of Edward's jacket folded under my head.

* * *

There's light shining through my eyelids. And someone is calling my name.

_Is. A Bell. Ahhh._

I fell asleep! And now it's night. The moon has come up over the trees. It's full. Bright. First time I've ever seen the moon in Forks. Shining in my eyes. Painting the grass silver. With shadows of night.

_Isabellahhh._

It's Edward. He calls me Isabella. Because he grew up in a time when people did that. Called each other by their full names. Poetic names.

I try to call back to him. Nothing comes out. I have no voice. Only a raw and aching throat.

Where are you?

I have to find him by sight, since I can't make a sound. My heart is pounding with worry. Maybe he can hear that.

I'm so sore from the rungs of the bench as I roll off it to stand up. More bruises to add onto the old ones – the ones I have not wanted to let go of now, because they are the last sign of that afternoon in the meadow.

Edward.

_Isabella._

He's calling me from the forest.

I step off the edge of the gazebo.

He's there! They all are! I knew they couldn't be dead! After everything that's happened they probably have to leave Forks. They faked their deaths so no one would follow them. But they came back for me. There they are in the shadows among the pines. Pale and beautiful. Edward waves to me, and I'm running, sprinting across the grass.

"Edward!" I whisper. That's all the sound that my throat can make.

Take me with you. Take me away. I'll go. Or else promise me that you'll come back. I'll wait for you. I'll wait. I promise.

I slam into his hard body, which has hardly any give at all. His scent surrounds me. Like forest. Like incense. Like everything that my heart desires. I lock my arms around his waist, so slender, just like mine, and bury my face in his chest.

I hear him whisper to me, sending his cool breath along the side of my face and in at my collar. They all are. Whispering softly around me, in vampire language without words.

Hold me. Hold me, Edward. Hold me forever.

Somewhere in the forest, an owl calls.

* * *

_A/N: Review replies: I fail. Overwhelmed and unable to figure out whom I had replied to and whom I hadn't. My deepest apologies to all. Please know that I have read and reread every one. This hiatus was too long. Difficult times in RL. Better now. Figure my first order of business is to actually post a chapter. Thank you to geo3 for beta! To each of you for reading. ~miaokuancha_


	57. Gone

What has gone before:

_I will go down with this ship_

_I won't put my hands up and surrender_

_There will be no white flag above my door_

_..._

* * *

**Gone**

"Dispatch."

"Patrol Two. Tell the Chief I'm headed up to the Cullen place."

"Copy. Send back-up?"

Deputy Dave – God how he hated that name, would almost rather be called Deputy Dawg – scanned the forest as his cruiser made its way up the meandering road through the trees. It was way past dark. But a full moon in a rare clear sky was making the landscape almost as bright as a cloudy day.

"I'll call in if I see anything."

The radio crackled a little. " – watch yourself – " Dead air. "– still in the area – "

"Not a rookie anymore, Jules; I know procedure."

"Cocky ass." Crackle. " – get yourself killed."

"No intention."

"Stupid kid."

Dave heaved a sigh. "I know. But it's their job at that age. Two out."

The road curved ahead through the grey and black forest. It only showed green in the glancing edges of his high beams. The Chief was worried sick about his daughter. Could hardly blame him, with all the deaths since January. Bad ones. The kind that stayed with a man, turned up at three A.M. in the dark of a sweaty bed after too much pizza and beer.

It was a hunch that brought Dave up here, while everyone else was scouring the woods and the bus stations. He'd seen the way that Cullen kid had caught the Chief's daughter, as she'd tripped over the blanket in her rush to her father, back on the night they'd fished Waylon Forge's body parts out of the lake. He'd seen the way the boy's hands had lingered on the girl. If there was something going on between those two, it only stood to reason that she'd come out here now.

The ground-up edge of the driveway came up before he expected, and the cruiser's tires slipped a little as he braked to turn in.

"I knew it."

There was the beat up truck the Chief had bought off his Quileute friend. Dave pulled over in the driveway and scanned the yard in front of him. No sign of anything moving. The girl had better be in the truck, otherwise she was probably in the bottom of the basement – fallen in trying to get a look into the ruins. He didn't want to think of what that would mean. Broken bones for sure, maybe worse.

Taking his flashlight, Dave walked over to the truck.

_Be in there, kid. Smoking weed, I don't care._

No such luck. Only a backpack on the passenger side of the bench seat.

He swept the grounds with his light.

"Bella!" That's what the Chief called her. Or 'Bells', but she probably wouldn't answer to that to anyone but her father. "Bella Swan!"

It was a dead still night. A trickle of water flowing over rocks somewhere was the only sound he could hear beside his own breathing. He called a few more times, criss-crossing the lawn as he did, stepping over the yellow tape where it was still strung between stakes. A few ends fluttered.

A sudden, hollow CRACK sent Dave to the ground, rolling, and unholstering his gun. The flashlight would only make him a target, so he doused it and crawled sideways, listening.

_It's never routine; **never**__ routine, asshole. God damn it._

As hard as he listened, there was no noise except for the water as before.

The moon was high and bright. It lit the yard, but also cast deep shadows. He strained to see anything that was the wrong shape, anything moving in those masses of darkness. The silence made his pulse loud and distracting. He forced himself to focus. The sound had come from the general direction of the running water. He knew better than to stare too fixedly in any one place. A slow scan rewarded him with a flash of something moving just before the report rang out again.

"Fuck! You suck, Cullens! You _suck_!"

Not a gun. A deer-scarer. One of those bamboo knocker things people put in their water gardens.

_Fucking rich people._

Dave got up and dusted himself off hard. He was damned if he was going to carry the signs of his roll in the grass back to the station.

The deer-scarer rang again, and his instincts told him the girl wasn't here. He retrieved his light and went to the edge of the ruins anyway. He wasn't going to leave until he'd made a thorough search, cross this place off the list once and for all.

The pit that had been the house's basement yawned like a huge and jagged mouth.

"Bella! Bella Swan! If you're in there, answer! Make a sound! We'll come down for you!"

He walked all the way around the edge, calling, and poking the flashlight beam into the darkness as best he could, squinting for anything that might look like a jacket, or blue jeans, or a shoe. But there were too many corners and holes that the light couldn't shine to the bottom of. If she was down there, unable to respond, they'd never find her without sending a crew in. Even in daylight.

There was a new sound, a whisper of air from behind, bringing Dave spinning on his heel, just in time to be caught almost full in the face by something large and grey. Feathers brushed his raised forearm as it blew past his head.

_Hoo … hoo-hoo … hoo-oo_

"Fucking _owl!_"

It didn't stop, but glided on into the trees beyond the house. If Dave had been a foot closer to the edge he might have fallen in, grappling with the thing as it strafed his forehead.

_"Bitch!"_

He swept his beam across the place the owl had flown from. Seven aspen stood faint and pale in the shadows of the pines. There, against one white trunk, something dark.

"Bella!"

He broke into a run, keying his shoulder mic.

"Bella Swan!"

No answer. But it was her. It had to be. She was standing, hugged tightly to the tree.

"Dispatch."

"Jules!" Still recovering from his second near-heart-attack of the night, he gulped air. "I found her!"

"Thank God."

Dave tugged at the silent and strangely immobile girl.

"Come on, kid, time to come home." No response.

"Is she okay?"

The girl just would not move. No matter how he pulled at her and called her name he couldn't peel her off the tree.

"Dave! What's going on over there?"

"Send medical."

"What happened?"

"She's got herself wrapped around a tree."

"Oh God."

"Not the truck, _her_. She's catatonic or something. I can't wake her up. She's wrapped on tight."

He pried at her fingers; which felt as cold as ice to him. No use. Unless he was willing to break them to pull her off the tree.

"Send medical. Now!"

* * *

"Dispatch to Patrol One."

"Report!"

"We found her."

Charlie Swan let himself breathe again. Billy and Harry had had the boys out combing the woods and shore of La Push since sunset. He'd just gotten their call of no luck. Now it didn't matter.

"Where?"

"Cullen place. Dave's with her."

He'd known that's where she'd be. Kid was sweet on Carlisle's youngest boy. What girl wouldn't be, after being saved from a van? But he'd been afraid, afraid to not search every single other place. The bodies – those cases weren't closed in his mind. And now the Cullens …

"Is she okay?"

"I'll patch you through. We've called medical."

"Medical? What's going on over there?"

Crackle. " – said she was unconscious. Patching now."

_Unconscious._

"I'm on my way."

He'd been on his way since pulling a U at Julia's first mention of the Cullen place. Now he lead-footed it, lights on, back through town and out again into the forest, with his deputy's voice rasping on the radio.

" … no breaks, no blood, breathing and pulse are good … "

But that one word. A bad word.

_Unresponsive._

She was clapped onto some tree, too tight for a sternal rub – well, and by God he'd kill any man that took his daughter's shirt off without him or a nurse present – but Dave had tried rolling his knuckles hard up and down the center of Bella's forehead. That was a painful enough maneuver to wake up anything but a bad OD or a coma.

" – didn't even flinch. Sorry, Chief."

_Stay on the road. Stay on the road. You got to get there in one piece for her._

The ambulance siren sounded up ahead from the moonlit dark. Two turns and he overtook them. They arrived together, bumping over the lawn to get close to the stand of trees where Dave was hailing them.

The slams of the vehicle doors echoed loud and hollow as everyone piled out. Charlie saw his daughter standing with her arms wrapped tightly around the slender trunk of a white aspen. Her head was turned to the right, cheek against the bark, eyes closed. As far as he could tell she wasn't in any pain. But she didn't look right.

Dave gave him the run-down, rapid fire, as Kyle and Ernie cut Bella's parka and shirt away to get a blood pressure cuff on one arm. She was on that tree so tight they could barely stuff the thing between her arm and the trunk. No hope of cardiac leads, they'd just have to listen by stethoscope through her back.

Standing up like she was, made everything hard. They couldn't put their equipment on the ground next to her but had to jack up the stretcher for a makeshift table. A low branch became a hook for an IV bag. Charlie and Dave lashed their heavy-duty flashlights to two others. It wasn't a good sign – converting the glade into a mini ER. Any time you had to stay on a scene longer than twenty minutes was just one more chance for something to go wrong.

"Vitals are good, Chief." Ernie reported. "We gotta put a line in her."

"Do it."

An antecubital was impossible, with her arms locked around the tree. Her hands and forearms were no better, the veins submerged from cold, even with the tourniquet. It took five pokes before they got in. She never made a sound, never twitched. Nothing.

Kyle hooked her to the saline and Charlie moved in again.

"Bells. Bells. It's your old man. Wake up, kid." He squeezed her shoulders. "Come on, baby girl." Her whole body was cold.

Two feet away, Ernie was on the radio to the ER doc.

" … completely rigid." He rattled off the child's vitals. "Glasgow three. Yes, you read me: _three_. Negative on tetany. She's like … almost decorticate – "

Charlie racked his brains to try to remember what that meant – something about the brain. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

" – but she's _standing_. We can't budge her." Ernie stepped over, pulling a small Maglite from his belt clip. "Sorry, Chief."

"Here." Charlie lifted his daughter's eyelids one at a time.

"Fixed and dilated."

_But still breathing._

Still breathing.

He wrapped his arms around his daughter and the tree. She should be shivering if she was as cold as she felt to him. He wondered briefly if it was such a good idea to be running cold saline into her, even at the slow drip they had going. "Come on, Bells. Snap out of it. You can't go checking out like this." He heard Ernie telling Kyle to get the intubation kit.

"What are you doing?"

"She's compromised, Chief. And anyway we gotta get her off the tree." He started drawing up medications in a syringe. "How much does she weigh?"

"What? Give me the comm."

Charlie barked into the receiver, "Who am I talking to?"

"Ken Lindsey."

"What's the plan here?"

"We've got to bring her in as fast as possible. Her presentation's saying brain injury. We're going to give her some succs and versed to try and relax her off the tree. We'll have to intubate immediately because she won't be able to maintain her airway once she's down."

_Down._ Like an animal.

"But she's breathing fine. Shouldn't we leave – "

"She's in some kind of coma – a deep one – and we don't know why. She's not stable like this: her airway can go any time. We gotta get her here where we can manage her, and figure out what the hell happened. Time's not on her side, Charlie."

Manage her. In Forks' tiny hospital? They didn't have the facilities. And with Carlisle gone, they didn't have the talent. They'd be shipping her out. To Seattle maybe, if it was as bad as Lindsey was saying.

Charlie handed the cell back to Ernie. "Do what you gotta do."

"How much does she weigh? A hundred, maybe?"

How much did his daughter weigh? He had no idea. She just looked small to him, so small. Small enough that he could pick her up and carry her in his arms. He'd never had the chance to do that nearly enough.

_Keep it together, Swan. Keep it together. You can't lose your shit now. Later. Not now._

"Get it off her records; she was just in there a couple months ago."

He grabbed a blanket roll off the stretcher and shook it out to wrap around his daughter. "Come on, baby girl. Come back to us. Come back."

"We hafta bag her first, Chief."

They struggled for a few minutes to get the oxygen mask over Bella's nose and mouth. How could she remain standing yet unconscious through all this? Charlie felt the hair on his arms standing up. This just wasn't natural.

"Damn, can't get a good seal." The tree trunk was in the way, her cheek pressed too tightly to it.

"Never mind," Charlie said. "I'll hold it. Hurry up." They cranked the O2 up to 15 liters, and Dave held the bag ready to start compressions if she stopped breathing on her own.

"Lido going in … now. Fent … Done." Kyle continued, injecting sedative and paralytic one by one through the IV in Bella's hand, while Ernie laid out the laryngoscope and trache tube on a makeshift sterile field. Four. Four different drugs they put in his daughter. Heavy drugs. _Enough to knock out a horse_ kept running through his head.

With the meds in, they waited. The only sound was the faint hiss of the oxygen and the beep of the pulse monitor that stayed clipped to her finger. Charlie just hoped that enough of the O2 was going into Bella's lungs to prepare her for what was coming once all her muscles let go. He held onto her, and the mask against her face, and closed his eyes.

"Is she softening up?"

Not that Charlie could tell.

"Give it a couple more minutes."

The moon was inching its way back down toward the treetops, pulling the shadows from the woods and the ruins and the untouched gazebo into taffy black ghosts across the lawn.

"Anything?"

Charlie tested his daughter's arms. They were as tight as ever.

"Shit. She should be completely flaccid by now."

"Check her vitals."

Kyle pumped up the blood pressure cuff again.

"She's stable."

"This ain't right."

Ernie called the hospital.

"No! You're not putting any more drugs in her. We're cutting down the damn tree."

Dave snapped to attention. "I'll get McClanahan."

"Do it."

The kid sprinted to his squad car, cell in hand. Joe McClanahan wouldn't appreciate being hauled out of bed at three in the morning; and he and his crew would need escort. Even after the fire, all that most people knew of where the Cullen house was, was that it was in the boondocks somewhere north of town. Or maybe east.

The two medics exchanged glances.

"Maybe she'll ease up before they get here," Kyle muttered.

She didn't.

It was four before the crew arrived, with disheveled hair and their breath blowing white in the slanting moon. Kyle and Ernie had taken turns getting warmed up in their vehicle, but Charlie had stayed with his daughter. With no coffee, and the temperature dropping as the night wore through, his hands were rough, and as cold as Bella's.

"Come on, baby girl. Just hold on. Cavalry's here."

Charlie didn't try to help as McClanahan's boys set up a tackle to pull the top of the tree away from Bella and all the instruments when the time came. He kept the blanket around her as best he could, kept the mask on her face, while Kyle and Ernie unhooked the IV bag and stowed it for the ride in. They pulled the flashlights off and everybody held one.

"Stoop down a little, Chief, we wanta get it as close above her head as we can."

Two inches above his head, the first chain saw spat to life, and whined loudly as it bit into the sap-filled wood.

_Brain injury._ From what? Carlisle had said her scans were clear from the crash. She hadn't been hit. Carlisle's boy had knocked her out of the way. And anyway that was months ago, now. So what was this? With his free hand Charlie searched his daughter's forehead and scalp for the tenth or hundredth time for any sign of a bruise or lump … or softness or ridge where none belonged. There was nothing.

Wet, fragrant sawdust rained down on his hair and the back of his neck, and his arms and the back of his hand where he shielded Bella's face from as much as he could. It would be a few days before he'd be able to hear again. There'd been no time for earplugs.

The trunk wasn't all that thick, and before he knew it there was a loud crack.

"Dave! Get clear!"

"Pull!"

"Shit! The other trees!"

"Just pull!"

With a last screech and grind the saw cut clear through the trunk and Dave and the boys jerked the top away from everybody's heads.

"Chief, you okay?"

Dimly, Charlie heard the felled aspen crackle and slide its way to earth through the branches of the surrounding pines.

"Come on, let's try to get her off this thing."

There was grunting and straining and not a little bit of embarrassment for several minutes.

It wasn't working. The girl's legs were locked straight, and she was full body plastered to the tree. Grabbing and hauling on her buttocks and thighs and under her arms to try to slide her up off the trunk was getting nowhere except bruising her. Even through her clothes, they all could feel it.

"God _damn_ it!"

"Chief."

Charlie glared at the lumberman and hoped that no tears were really leaking out the corners of his eyes.

"I can cut just under her arms. Even if she don't let go, we can load her with it."

The thought of that chain saw anywhere near his daughter's body made Charlie sick. But it had to be done – and fast. God only knew how long she'd been out like this already.

"Turn the damn oxygen off. I don't want any sparks catching."

"Should we try to collar her first?"

"She's not going anywhere." _I got her._

The chain saw growled and whined again. Aspen sap bled – sweet, pungent, and crystalline in the moonlight – as the blade ate its way through under Bella's armpits.

"Not too close! Not too close!"

"Break it! Try to break it off now!"

"Ditch the mask! Help me pull!"

Dave and Ernie piled on, while Kyle protected the instruments. There was a cracking and ripping of wood, and suddenly everything gave way. Three men and a girl ended up on their backs in a heap. But they'd freed her from the tree. With a long, tense minute of tugging and wrestling, three pairs of hands finally extricated the last segment of trunk from her arms, and she fell limp as a rag in their grasp.

Kyle was already gloved up and wading in.

"Light, give me light!"

Did they have to do this?

Nobody was asking Charlie's permission any more. Dave pulled him away, and he watched numbly as Kyle stuck the hard metal scope down his daughter's throat, and the plastic tube after it. She never so much as gagged.

"I'm in! Bag her!"

No more mask, just the ambu bag and oxygen screwed straight to the tube. Collar. Hard board. Blanket rolls. Charlie watched them strap her on tight and load her into the ambulance.

Slamming doors. Engine. Siren fading down the hill.

He barely heard Dave say he'd take care of the report at the station. Only vaguely registered McClanahan's boys packing up their gear, and Joe waiting to ride in with him to the hospital.

The moon lay big and round on one end of the sky, as the first edge of rising light paled the other. A lone dark bird flew out of that light and over Charlie's head.

He would have to call Renee.

* * *

_A/N: First of all big shout-out and thank you to Woodlily, ATONAU, and MeilleurCafe for helping me with this chapter. I was about as stuck as could be and they unstuck me. Thank you also as always, to everyone who reads, who PMs me, tweets, etc asking after the story. You all mean the world to me, and help me keep writing, no matter how slowly._

_There was a lot of jargon in this chapter, so here is a 'glossary' which I hope may be useful / interesting. In order of appearance:_

_(1) Sternal rub: this is a maneuver used to rouse unresponsive patients. The knuckles are rolled, hard, up and down along the center line of the breast bone. It hurts like an SOB and usually wakes people even if they are in a heavy stupor as from alcohol, drugs or medication. The center of the forehead is an alternate location for this maneuver, and that's the one that Dave uses here, since Bella's breastbone is pressed to the trunk of the tree._

_(2) Antecubital: meaning in the crook of the elbow. It is a favored site for blood draws and IV starts, especially in the field or emergency department, because the vein there is relatively large and easy to stick. With her arms wrapped around the tree, Bella's antecubital area is not accessible so they have to go for her hand, wrist or forearm._

_(3) Glasgow three: this is referring to the Glasgow Coma scale - a commonly used assessment tool to evaluate level of consciousness. Here is a summary of the scale and how it's used: : / / www . unc . edu/~rowlett/units/scales/glasgow . htm A three is the lowest score possible on the Glasgow coma scale and indicates deep coma._

_(4) Tetany: a spastic hyper-exitability of motor nerves caused by electrolyte imbalances. Here's a video: : / / www . youtube watch?v=hOzOCNCfa_Y _

_(5) __Decorticate: this is a type of involuntary posturing that is associated with brain injury. The two types of posturing are outlined here: : / / head-nurse . blogspot 2010/10/abnormal-posturing-made-overly-simple . html Decorticate is the first level of serious brain injury, indicating potentially permanent impairment or loss of higher functions like thought, speech and coordinated movement. The next step, decerebrate, corresponds to impairment or loss of basic functions like breathing and blood pressure regulation. Charlie is right to be scared._

___(6) Succs: succynylcholine: a fast-acting muscle relaxing drug used in emergency intubation. _

___(7) Versed: midazolam, also known as 'milk of amnesia' - a strong sedative used in emergency and surgical settings as part of the combination used for induction of anaesthesia. _

___(8) ____Lido: lidocaine - a medication used to prepare a patient for induction of anaesthesia. It regulates cardiovascular responses and is considered a protective agent in case of suspected increased intracranial pressure._

___(9) ____Fent: fentanyl - a powerful pain reliever used in emergency and surgical anaesthesia._

___(10) Here is the reference I used to try to get the procedural details of the intubation fairly close to real. : / / www . scdhec . gov/health/ems/rsi . pdf Practice varies with location and time period (there have been innovations since the time the story is set, 2007), and there is considerable variation in the choice of medications. Hopefully the one I modeled after is middle-of-the road enough to pass. Any paramedics reading please pm me with corrections. I will gladly incorporate. Yes, I have a nerd card._


	58. The Whirl and the Suck

**The Whirl and the Suck**

"You don't have to do this, Mrs. Swan."

They were in Seattle Children's Hospital, not Forks, so of course all of what the nurse knew about them was that she was the mother and Charlie was the father. But still, Renee wondered, couldn't people for once, even once, just not assume?

That she and Charlie were still married.

That Phil was her kid brother. It didn't help that Phil and she had similar coloring - dusky blond, blue eyed.

"She's my baby. I've always been there for her."

"Of course."

And the nurse coached her on how to help turn, and clean, and change the paper pad under a coma patient on a ventilator who had just shit her bed. Like an infant. About the same amount and consistency, too, since she'd had nothing in her stomach since nine days ago. Renee didn't even bother to tell the nurse that she'd been helping with Bella's care for the past week. At least the doctors had agreed to keep the catheter in for urine. Renee was damned if she'd see her child with diaper rash from being wet. They could damn well give her antibiotics if she got an infection.

She and the nurse finished, and propped Bella on her side with pillows so she wouldn't get bedsores. Bedsores. At her age. _She's going to wake up. She has to wake up. There's nothing wrong with her. All the tests were negative._

Renee walked out of the glass-enclosed room with its beeps and tubes, to where Charlie and Phil were standing talking with the doctor – an olive-skinned woman in a headscarf. Sabzwari, or Subsvari or something, was her name; Renee couldn't pronounce it right and felt stupid on account of that. She just called her "Doctor S" in her mind and left it at that.

"Renee," Dr. S greeted her with an outstretched hand, "I thought we might go to the family room and discuss Bella's plan of care."

This was going to be trouble. Renee just knew it. But she followed anyway; past the nurse's station, through the double doors that opened when you pressed a plate on the wall, and down the wide hall to a small, cheerfully decorated sitting room with a coffee machine and comfortable couches. It looked like a waiting room in an upscale pediatrician's office, complete with floor puzzles and one of those wire things with the colored beads.

Phil sat down next to Renee, but didn't take her hand. Charlie kept his eyes on the doctor.

Dr. S looked back at all of them and took a deep breath. Renee wondered if she had children of her own. She looked about the same age as her and Charlie. Probably she did, then. How did she stand working in a place where all the children were sick? And some – maybe many – died.

"So, as you all know, Bella has been here for nine days with no change in her condition. She remains in a very deep coma. Our serial EEGs show essentially no brain activity – "

_That can't be right. There must be something wrong with the machines._

"And she hasn't responded to any stimuli, not even painful ones."

Phil did take Renee's hand at that. Charlie's face was a mask.

The doctor took another breath. "Technically, legally, a flat EEG indicates brain death. Especially when it remains unchanged, as it has, even under aggressive attempts to elicit a response."

Aggressive attempts. Like submerging Bella's hands in ice water. Or dripping hot wax on her skin. Renee had thought of that one. It was a game she and Bella had used to play with candles – making molds of their palms, and belly buttons.

"My baby's not dead!"

Dr. S looked around to each of them. "Certain very basic functions appear to be persisting on their own: heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature. But even the most basic reflexes to withdraw from pain or heat or cold are completely absent. Most important as far as her prognosis is concerned is that her pupils don't react to light and she seems to have no cough or gag reflex. As for all the things that make her your Bella …" The doctor looked down at her hands. "It would be unethical, and cruel, to offer false hope here. The most that I can say is that her vital organs all seem to be functioning normally so far, and we've been unable to discover any organic cause for her unconsciousness."

"So that's good, right?"

Dr. S held Charlie's gaze. "I can't say if it's good or bad Mr. Swan. But I do have a recommendation."

Charlie got that look that Renee knew so well. The one she called his staring down a bear face.

"Shoot."

"This is in accord with accepted practice and with our hospital policy – "

No. Nothing good ever started like that.

"And I also believe it's in Bella's best interest."

"Just spit it out, Doc."

"I'm recommending that we take her off the ventilator."

"No! No, you can't!" The words tore out of Renee's mouth before she could even think them.

"Hear me out. It's not what you think."

Both of Phil's arms wrapped around her, holding her on the couch. "It's going to be okay, babe. Just listen. Let her speak." As if he knew anything.

Catty-corner from them, Charlie's eyes drilled into the doctor. "What's the plan?"

"We shut off the ventilator and see if she breathes on her own. If she does, then we can try extubating her. If she doesn't, of course you have the option to resume ventilation, or … or allow nature to take its course."

_Nature? What's nature got to do with this?_ Nothing about this was natural.

"How long do we wait to see if she breathes?" Charlie grated. "And what's the risk of her getting brain damage from the lack of oxygen while we're waiting?"

"She'd have a four to five minute window before hypoxia would start to cause cell death. I think that would be adequate for the trial."

Trial. Like being on trial for her life.

"What about her heart?" Charlie asked.

"Her heart will be all right."

"Why can't we just leave her on the ventilator until she wakes up?" Renee remembered distinctly, _distinctly_, the day she'd arrived on the red eye from Jacksonville, and been horrified to see her daughter tubed up to the machines: the ICU nurse had told her that the fact that Bella wasn't fighting the ventilator – wasn't "bucking" it as she'd called it – meant that she needed the machine to breathe. That she wouldn't breathe without it.

"According to the EMT report, Bella was breathing independently when she was found, even though she was already comatose. If her body is still able to breathe on its own, the longer we keep her vented the more risk she has of losing that function permanently – "

"You mean they shouldn't have stuck those tubes down her in the first place!" Charlie burst out.

"No. I don't mean that at all."

There was more – Charlie looking angry and scared, the doctor going on about standard protocols and best practice and Renee didn't know what all else. She didn't care. They'd boxed themselves in, boxed _Bella_ in. Things had been done wrong at the start, and now Bella was in a trap. Bella had been breathing and they'd taken that away from her. Now it was too late to give it back.

She stood up. "I can't do this. I'm going for a walk."

Phil stood, too. Charlie's jaw dropped in disbelief.

Phil colored.

"We'll meet you in the caf," Renee offered, "We'll get you some coffee."

"You do that."

"What the _hell_, Charlie? What do you want from me? Is there anything I can do here? _Anything?_" Renee started to tear up. She hated crying in public. Hated the way the tears burned and her face got red.

Charlie stood up. Renee saw him and Phil exchange looks. Charlie's face was red, too. They had that in common, still. "Go ahead. I'll meet you both downstairs."

* * *

Charlie sat on the couch with his head in his hands. The doctor was there, waiting him out, without interrupting.

"Sorry about that," he said at last.

"This is a very difficult time for you all." Her face and accent and scarf reminded him of where he had been when Renee had been pregnant with Bella.

"So we take her off the machine and see how she does."

"Yes. Every precaution will be taken for Bella's welfare. There will be a full team at her bedside, monitoring her progress and ready to intervene immediately if there is any untoward response."

"And if she breathes okay, that means it's okay to take out the tube?"

"If she demonstrates adequate tone to maintain her airway, yes."

"And then?"

"She needs a feeding tube. She's losing weight. The IV fluids she's been getting are only a stopgap."

They'd discussed this a couple days ago, but Charlie couldn't for the life of him remember what had been said.

"You mean like, down her nose or something?" He'd seen that, in the field hospital at Dhahran.

"For short term that would do, but if Bella doesn't wake up in the next few weeks I would really recommend a tube through her abdominal wall to the upper part of her intestine."

"You're going to cut her?"

"It's safer. Nasogastric tubes can creep up and there's risk of the feeding getting into her lungs. She can also potentially reflux stomach contents during care. The J-tube is safest for her."

Charlie put his head in his hands again.

"And if she doesn't breathe on her own?"

"Of course we resume ventilation. For as long as you and her mother require it."

Not as long as Bella requires it. As long as he and Renee required it. She was saying she believed Bella was a lost cause already. They were going through the motions. Just like she'd refused to order the PET scan or whatever it was. Saying it wouldn't give them any diagnostic information that they didn't already have from the CT scans and the MRIs and the EEGs. Insurance wouldn't cover. She'd be called up on it.

Carlisle would have ordered it. Would have made it stick with the insurance company, too. But nobody'd been able to raise him since the fire.

How?

How had everything come to this? Three months ago he'd gotten his little girl back. It wasn't going to be for long. But he'd take what he could get. Then there was that kid lost on the ski trail. It had been horrible for her family when they couldn't find her, but to the patrols and law enforcement it had been sad but routine. Disappearances happened in the mountains sometimes. Then the security guard had been taken by a bear in the next county. And then the girl's remains had been found. And then the bodies started piling up. In pieces. Like things he'd seen in the desert. It was all related – the Cullens, too – Charlie's instincts screamed that to him every night; but he couldn't keep up with the way it all was spiraling out of control, sweeping right up to his front porch, as if ripping his daughter away from him had been the goal all along.

He flashed on her figure in the moonlight, clamped tight to the white-barked tree. She'd been completely unmovable. Three men couldn't unwrap her. Not without chainsaws. Now she was completely _limp_ in that hospital bed, with the tubes and monitors and the hiss of the ventilator, while he, and Renee, yes and that wet-behind-the-ears baseball player too, had taken turns sitting and waiting and praying and talking to her and reading her favorite books, playing her favorite music; anything to call her back. The doctor was right. Bella was losing weight. He could see it. Her eyes and cheeks were sinking in. She looked older than she was.

"I'm going to need to think about all this."

"Of course. You're daughter's condition has been very stable throughout her course here. Take all the time you need."

* * *

_To all of you to whom I promised this would be up on Sunday: I'M SORRY! I got cold feet, and revision fever. O.o _

_To one and all: thank you for reading._


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